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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28439739">The Glimmerling</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloverCloverClover/pseuds/CloverCloverClover'>CloverCloverClover</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fantasy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:07:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>30,380</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28439739</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloverCloverClover/pseuds/CloverCloverClover</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A (kind of) self-contained original fantasy work. A young wizard traveling through a dark forest meets strange creatures, a witch, and travels to a village under a dark curse. More on the dark side of fantasy, less sword and sorcery, with a dash of horror. Contains some dark themes and borderline sexual content. I will be posting this on royalroad.com.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Glimmerling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Note:</b>
</p><p>Whether you have read some of my other fanfiction, or not, this is a kind of an original story I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a while. It’s mostly one big self-contained thing that’s sort of a ‘taste’ of a larger original story I’ve been thinking of working on, but you’ll find a full plot within this work alone. As always, please give feedback if you read it – I know original works tend to get a lot less attention than fanfiction. This could be a part of a larger story, but I don’t know when I plan to have the time to continue it.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>1.</b>
</p><p>The young wizard sat before a dark cave, pondering over a large tome opened before him, puffing on a long-stemmed pipe.</p><p>He was barely of age – some would have still called him boy, though his face was thoughtful. He had a wild shock of brown hair, unkempt, that fell down to around his shoulders, and inquisitive green eyes, tanned skin somewhat dirtied by travel. He wore a coat of black fur over his traveling leathers, and a bright red scarf, that he tugged tighter around him against the brisk autumn air, a chill settling in as the sun set in the sky. He fumbled with the pages of the book before him, his hands in stiff, thick gloves. The wind howled through the dark, bare trees surrounding him, and irritably he brushed leaves out of the words he was reading as the thick, red and brown carpet of an autumn forest moved in waves over his book. He had a sword on his belt, and by his side, a crossbow.</p><p>He sniffed, and looked up at the entrance to the cave before him. It was a meager cave, more of a hole in the ground, though large enough for him to enter standing up, though he might have to watch his head as it sloped down sharply. He had no plans to enter the cave, though. He dug beneath his scarf, removing a glimmering black key attached to a leather thong around his neck, and held it out, dangling, towards the cave. The key trembled for a moment, and then whipped towards the cave, straining at the leather, pulling it taut, as if pulled towards it by some invisible force. He tucked the key back in beneath his scarf and shook his head. No, definitely not going in there.</p><p>He closed the book and placed it in a pack that lay next to him, then got up, stretching, his joints popping. Lazily, he kicked at the leaves he had been sitting in, sweeping them aside until a layer of dark brown dirt was exposed.</p><p>Suddenly, a low, keening wail drifted from the entrance of the cave. The young wizard looked up sharply, his eyes widening, and suddenly he began sweeping away the leaves much more quickly, even a bit frantically, until a circular patch of dirt large enough for him to lay down in was exposed. He grabbed a fallen branch and began tracing symbols in the dirt, as the wail from the cave slowly grew louder and louder. It did not sound like any animal. It sounded like a long, low whistle, echoed over and over upon itself, growing louder and louder and louder. The wizard breathed in deep, to calm himself, as he labored on drawing the sigils in the dirt surrounding him.</p><p>Suddenly, the low wail stopped, its echoes trailing away. From the darkness of the cave came a cacophonous rattling sound, though still, nothing could be seen within. And then, a voice. A voice that seemed oddly lyrical, that faded in and out, as if the words themselves were an echo. “<em>Brave little man. But foolish little man. Why did you not flee?”</em></p><p>The wizard stood, mopping the sweat from his brow, peering at the cave. The vague, blurry outline of….<em>something, </em>could be seen there, at the edge of the cave’s shadow, but the light of day had already sunk too far for it to be clear<em>. </em>The outline was man-sized, and might even have been mistaken for a man wearing a cloak from a distance. The wizard knew that it was absolutely not human, though. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out an unsheathed dagger made of the same gleaming black metal as the key around his neck. “I come with an offering,” he said, waving the dagger above his head.</p><p>“<em>An offering,” </em>the voice scoffed. “<em>An offering of what is mine by right. If I took your pretty little head, mageling, would you say it was an offering if I so kindly gave it back? The gall.” </em>The dagger flew from the wizard’s hand into the cave, as if yanked out by an invisible hand. “<em>And that is not all you have, is it? I will be taking the rest, as well.”</em> Suddenly, the key around the wizard’s neck flew towards the cave, straining against the leather thong until it snapped. The wizard watched ruefully, abashed, as the key disappeared into the darkness.</p><p>Silence from the cave stretched for a long moment. Then with incredible force, the hilt of the dagger, the blade of dark metal neatly shorn from it, flew out to strike the wizard in the head with its pommel. He cursed, rubbing the welt already rising on his forehead. “<em>Consider that the price of trying to hide the key from me,” </em>hissed the voice.</p><p>“Is the offering...sufficient?”</p><p>A long stretch of silence from the cave yet again. <em>“Yes,” </em>came the voice. And then the figure on the edge of the cave’s shadow stepped forward.</p><p><br/>
The creature that emerged was covered in a long, tattered robe that dragged in the leaves that surrounded it. It was broad, wide, swaying back and forth as it approached him, with a hunched back that rose high above its head. Its head was something like a fox’s, with bright read fur, but its snout was broader, like a wolf’s. In place of its eyes, it had round, shiny black stones, of the same metal that the dagger and key had been made of. When it bared its teeth, they too were made of the same dark metal. It shuffled towards the wizard, surprisingly quick despite its awkwardness, and then stopped at the edge of the sigils he had scratched into the ground, snorting at them. It was nearly of the same height as the wizard, though its hunched back meant that the fox’s head had to peer up at him. When it spoke, it seemed as if the voice was coming from somewhere within it, rather than from its head – its lips did not move. “<em>You want a telling. I will need your blood for this.”</em></p><p>“Right,” replied the wizard, tugging off one of his thick gloves. Gingerly, he extended his bare palm across the edge of the sigils, towards the creature.</p><p>The creature was quiet for a moment. And then, a horrible rattling sound that the wizard eventually realized was its laughter emanated from it. “<em>Little mageling. I am feeling generous, </em><em>so I will tell you</em><em>. </em><em>Anything I could cut you with would mean a slow, wasting death for your kind. You will want to cut yourself and then offer your hand.”</em></p><p>The rattling laughter continued as the wizard blushed crimson and withdrew his hand hastily. He unsheathed his sword and drew it delicately against his palm, until his cupped hand flowed with blood, and then once again extended it back across the circle of sigils.</p><p>The creature’s fox head dipped towards the blood flowing from his palm, sniffed it, then lapped at it gently. Its tongue felt rough enough to tear the skin from his hand if it had wanted. Then it raised its head, his blood dripping from its nose, sniffing at the air. “<em>You will go south, a few day’s travel from here,” </em>it said after sniffing the air a few times. “<em>You will come upon a cursed lakeside village.”</em></p><p>The wizard waited as the creature kept its head in the air. Finally, it lowered its nuzzle and simply stared at him with those unblinking, metal eyes. “Is that it…?” he asked.</p><p>The creature simply stared at him in silence until he began to feel uncomfortable. “<em>There is someone waiting for you back at your camp,”</em> it added. Then, without ceremony, it turned around and began shuffling back towards its cave.</p><p>The wizard growled with frustration. He had wanted more than this. “Friend or foe?” he called after the creature, before it disappeared back into the darkness.</p><p>The creature paused, lifting its snout into the air to sniff once more. Then again, it gave its hideous, rattling laugh. “<em>I can never tell with your kind.” </em>And then, without another word, it shuffled back into the darkness of the cave, disappearing from view.</p><p>The wizard huffed, waiting for a few moments before scuffing the circle away with the side of his boot. He glanced around the forest, which was quickly sinking into darkness, the trees now like black sentinels rising from the carpet of leaves. He quickly hoisted his pack onto his back and grabbed his crossbow, hurrying from the spot back towards camp, wading through the rustling leaves.</p><p>
  <b>2.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>For a moment, as the wizard approached his camp, he wondered if the creature had lied to him. His campsite was little more than a circle of stones arranged to make a campfire, next to a rotten stump, within a tight circle of trees to hide it from the view of any who might wander these woods, chosen conveniently seated next to a large outcropping of lichen-covered boulders to block the wind. At first, in the dim dusk, he could see no one.</p><p>But then, as he got closer, he realized someone was sitting by his unlit campfire. Though he could not tell, at all, who they were. They looked like a pile of loose rags beneath a large, tattered pointed hat, the rags covering their body completely, and the hat hiding their face completely in shadow. As he approached, he bought his crossbow up to point at them. “Alright,” he shouted, while still hidden by the trees. “Who is it who waits by my camp?”</p><p>The pile of rags shifted. Beneath the hat, he could see two eyes gleaming in the darkness. “Naught but an old crone,” came a thin, warbling voice. “Hoping to warm herself by a kind traveler’s fire. Just a little warmth, stranger, if you’d be so generous.”</p><p>The wizard peered around the edge of the tree, looking suspiciously at the figure. The creature hadn’t said she was an enemy. Nevertheless it hadn’t said she wasn’t one either. But he figured, if this crone – if indeed that was what she was – was going to try to attack him immediately, it would have been easy to simply label her an enemy.</p><p>He put his crossbow down, and approached the campfire. The two gleaming eyes watched him intently from the pile of rags as he sat down upon the stump, and carefully stacked the wood in the stone circle until it leaned against each other, and set some dry leaves in the center. Then he sat and concentrated. After about a minute, the dry leaves began to smoulder, smoke curling up at their edges, and then a moment later flame began to lick at them. As soon as the first flame appeared, the wizard clapped his hands, and with a small blast of hot air, the flame roared upwards, hotter and hotter, to catch the wood on fire. Soon, a small, merry campfire was beating back the creeping shadows of the forest.</p><p>“Ah,” said the crone. “So you know some of the Art.” From within the rags, a pair of gnarled, knotted, twisted hands extended, to warm themselves by the fire.</p><p>“A bit, here and there,” he replied cautiously, packing his pipe, lighting it with the end of a hot twig from the fire.</p><p>“So modest. ‘Tis not a small thing to summon flame so young. And handsome, too.” The crone’s eyes gleamed in the darkness.</p><p>The wizard grunted noncommittally, puffing on his pipe, watching the crone warily. “So do you know some of the Art as well, then?”</p><p>“A bit, here and there,” she replied mockingly. The gnarled joints of her fingers popped as she flexed them dangerously close to the fire.</p><p>“So why did you not start the fire yourself?”</p><p>“My talents lie elsewhere.” She shifted beneath her rags, careful, the wizard noted, not to let the flickering light of the campfire illuminate her face beneath the hat. “Might I impose on your kindness a bit more, stranger? You would not happen to have any extra rations to fill an old woman’s stomach, would you?”</p><p>The wizard puffed on his pipe strong enough to release a cloud of smoke as he considered the crone. Finally, he opened his pack and rummaged through it, removing a small slab of hardtack bread. “Bread. But it’s very hard.”</p><p>“My teeth are still good, young one,” the crone replied. She caught the bread with surprising deftness as he tossed it, and it quickly disappeared into the shadows beneath her hat with a loud crunch and small noises of satisfaction. “Thank you. Very kind for a young man. You may call me Elyse. What may I call you?”</p><p>“Martimeos. Martim for short.”</p><p>“Martimeos,” the crone sighed, as if relishing the name. She withdrew her clawed and gnarled hands back into her rags, so all that was now visible of her was her eyes gleaming in the firelight. “Well, Martimeos. What brings a kind young traveler such as yourself into these woods? This is a dark forest, full of spirits and darker things that would lure unlucky travelers from their path.”</p><p>“Just wandering.” Martim tapped out the ashes of his pipe on the side of the stump, taking a small iron scraper from his boot to dig at what he could not tap out.</p><p>“I have been watching you, curious man. It does not seem like you are wandering. It seems like you are looking for something.”</p><p>Martim paused in his scraping, feeling a chill run up his spine. He resumed, calling lightheartedly, “Oh? And how long have you been watching me for?”</p><p>“Oh, weeks now. Night and day. ‘Tis very easy with talents such as mine. What curious creatures men are.”</p><p>Martim found his mind racing over the past few weeks. He wondered if she had been watching when he had stopped a few days back to bathe in a cold, clear stream he had found trickling through the woods. The hag’s gleaming eyes revealed nothing. “I don’t know that I appreciate that, crone,” he muttered.</p><p>“Elyse.” The crone tilted her head, curiously. “I...’twas meant to reassure you. Had I meant harm, I could have stolen in to cut your throat in your sleep long ago.”</p><p>“Very reassuring.” Martim put his pipe away, and leaned forward to warm his hands on the fire. “And why were you following me?”</p><p>The rags shifted. Martim caught a glimpse of a pale leg, surprisingly smooth, as Elyse readjusted her position, before it disappeared back within the rags. “Let us say that I am a wanderer myself. But even for one with some knowledge of the Art….these woods can be dangerous to an old crone. I wanted to know if you might make a suitable traveling companion.”</p><p>“And why would I want you as a traveling companion?”</p><p>“Why not?” laughed the crone. “Two with the Art are better than one, yes?”</p><p>“You do not even know if I am traveling the same direction you are.”</p><p>“Well then. Which direction are you traveling?”</p><p>Martimeos paused yet again. He did not know if he wanted to be telling this crone which way he was headed. But if it were true that she had been watching him, he supposed it did not matter. She would be able to follow him no matter whether or not he told her. And there could be a price to lying to a witch. “South,” he said.</p><p>Elyse tilted her head once more. “And what drives you south?”</p><p>“I asked a Dolmec.”</p><p>The crone murmured appreciatively to herself, silent for a moment as the fire crackled and the shadows danced along the trees. Night had truly fallen now, the small circle of orange glow cast by the fire the only thing illuminating the forest. “You must have no mean knowledge of sigils to protect yourself from a Dolmec and win a telling,” she said after a while.</p><p>Martim blushed, remembering the creature’s mocking laughter. If not for its kindness – something Dolmec were not known for – it might have meant his life. “Y-yes,” he replied modestly.</p><p>“I could travel south,” the crone replied. “What say you, Martimeos? I will not slow you down, and I will share what rations I find. I am a huntress of no small skill. I could make sure you eat meat every once in a while, rather than hardtack bread weeks on end. And together we could protect each other from the dangers of this forest.”</p><p>“I suppose if you wanted you could merely follow me,” Martim mumbled. “Very well.”<br/>
<br/>
“Good,” said Elyse. And then she rose. And Martimeos shouted, nearly falling off the stump in shock, as she stood up, revealing not an ancient and withered crone, but a young woman of pale, fair skin, a long shock of jet black hair that came down nearly to her waist, rough and woven through with leaves, and a pair of dark blue eyes set into a face that graced him with a wicked, mischievous smile. She was short, her head just reaching his chest, though her hat was tall enough that it rose above his head. Her clothes and hat, though remained tattered and ragged. “’Twas a glamour!” she laughed at him, as he steadied himself on the stump. “Have you not heard of this Art?”</p><p>“I know a bit of it,” he muttered, “But only to make small objects appear for a short time. Never to make illusions that move so convincingly. But why?”</p><p>“Hmm.” Elyse smiled, putting a finger to her lips thoughtfully. “I wanted to see the sort of man you were. I wanted to make sure you were not a braggart. And kind enough to offer aid to an old woman in need. And….” here, she flung her hair dramatically. “I wanted to make sure you would not take me along merely because of my striking beauty.”</p><p>“Striking, that’s going a bit far, isn’t it,” Martim muttered, as her smile turned to a frown. He got up, brushing dirt from her pants, and peered at her thoughtfully, fetching his pipe from a pocket to chew on the stem of it, unlit. “Pretty, sure. But striking?” he snorted. “But how do I know that this is not the glamour, and what I saw before the reality?”</p><p>Elyse rolled back the sleeve of her rags, and extended a pale, thin arm out towards him, a thick black ring on her ring finger. “A glamour may fool the sight, but not the other senses,” she replied. “Come and feel for yourself if you doubt me.”</p><p>Somehwat to her surprise, Martimeos tugged off his thick gloves and stomped over towards her, peering curiously at her arm, running cold, coarse fingers up and down it, squeezing here and there. “It was an impressive glamour. How did you maintain concentration? It looked so real when you caught the bread...”</p><p>“’Tis...not so impressive as all that. You rely on the mind of the onlooker to fill in the gaps of your glamour that do not make sense.” She laughed as he prodded her upper arm, tickling her. “How much of me are you going to squeeze to convince yourself that I am real?”</p><p>Martim glanced down at her, her eyes sparkling mischievously, a faint blush on her cheeks. “Sorry,” he said, dropping her arm. “But….are you going to feel safe traveling alone with a man?”</p><p>Elyse crossed her arms, peering at him curiously. “I...have not seen much of men, except for from a distance, and in stories. ‘Tis true my mother told me they were dangerous. ‘Twas why I followed you for so long. But you do not seem dangerous to me; merely curious.” She shrugged. “What is man, but a woman, except more square, and with a funny bit betwixt his legs?” Martim gave her a frank look, and she blushed furiously. “I am not a child. I know what men and women do together. But you do not seem like the type of man who would force himself upon me. And if you tried, I would turn you into a moth.”</p><p>Martim’s eyes brightened. “D’you know how to do that?”</p><p>“Ah...no,” Elyse admitted, and Martim gave a silent ‘bah’ of disappointment, waving a hand as he walked away from her to grab a stick. Elyse followed him, watching curiously as he walked around the campsite, at the edge of the fire’s light, using the stick to trace intricate patterns in the ground, brushing aside leaves to reveal dirt. “What is this?” she asked curiously.</p><p>“Protective runes, so that we do not have to set guard,” Martim answered, furrowing his brow in concentration. “If any approach us with hostile intent, it will make a loud sound.”</p><p>“Hmm.” Elyse picked up a stick of her own, and watching Martim, attempted to trace the same shape next to one of his own.</p><p>But Martim shook his head. “Not like that. They have to be very precise. And drawn in the correct order.”</p><p>“Will you teach me?”</p><p>Martim gave her a sidelong glance. “Will you teach me what you know of the Art in return?”</p><p>“Of course. Fair is fair.”</p><p>Martim nodded, and then satisfied, tossed away the stick, and retreated back to his lean-to, laying down in a soft bed of leaves as he wrapped his black fur cloak around him. He glanced across the fire at Elyse. She too was bedding down on a padding of leaves, but made no effort to shield herself from the crisp autumn air. And her robe of tattered rags did not seem to offer much protection. He felt his face heating as her bare legs flashed in the campfire light as she adjusted herself, occasionally slipping out of her ragged dress. “Are you not cold like that?” he asked.</p><p>“Do not worry about me,” Elyse grinned. “I am very hot-blooded.”</p><p>Martim shrugged, then clapped his hands once more. The campfire immediately extinguished itself with a sudden ‘fwoomph’, leaving nothing but a bed of hot coals. In the darkness, he whispered a word to his cloak and it grew warm and comfortable, before wrapping it tighter about himself, rolling over, and falling asleep.</p><p>
  <b>3.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>Martimeos woke up the next morning to a weight on top of him and a deep rumble shaking throughout his chest. When he groggily stumbled out of slumber, he was greeted by two intense yellow feline eyes staring directly into his. They belonged to a large gray cat – larger than any housecat, larger than a fox, but smaller than a wolf – gray, and speckled with stripes and spots, with a yellow-furred underbelly. Its ears were large and pointed, with black tufts of fur at the tips, and though it was well-furred everywhere, its hair was thicker around its throat.</p><p>Martimeos stared at the cat for a moment as it purred at him. He could feel its long tail swishing back and forth on his legs. “Well, hello,” he said bemusedly.</p><p>As if in response, the cat leaned over to the side, picking up a the limp, wet corpse of a muskrat. This it dropped unceremoniously onto Martim’s face.</p><p>“Fah!” Martim shouted, bolting upright. The cat leapt off his chest and looked back at him, offended, but quickly returned to nuzzle up to him, still purring, as he delicately picked up the dead muskrat and placed it on the ground next to him.</p><p>Laughter rang out across the camp, and he looked over. Elyse was awake and sitting on the stump by the remains of the fire, watching him. Around her head flew a small red cardinal, alighting in her hair and jumping around, chirping. “That is my familiar, Cecil,” she grinned. “I think he likes you. And I suppose this little fellow is yours. Ah!” She whipped off her large hat as the small cardinal entered through one of its tattered holes and began chirping madly inside.</p><p>“His name’s Flit,” Martim replied, standing up and brushing the dead leaves from his clothes. He whistled until the little red cardinal fluttered away from her to alight on his outstretched finger, hopping back and forth as it babbled in its furious little bird-speech at him.</p><p>“Oh, just Flit?”</p><p>“It is the name he chose for himself. Actually, it is short for his full name.” Martimeos bought Flit up to his ear so the bird could hop close and chirp his report. His brow furrowed as he concentrated on translating from the bird’s insanely quick, staccato speech.</p><p>“And what is his full name?”</p><p>Martim rolled his eyes as he released Flit, and the tiny bird quickly climbed into the sky above the trees, a bright red dot soaring south. “He who flitters on crimson wing through the night, terror of crow and hawk, the scarlet sentinel of snowy wood and field….’twould take me all morning to tell you it in full. Cardinals are pompous little birds.” He glanced around the campsite, noting that the dead muskrat was not the only prey Cecil had bought back; by Elyse’s feet lay two rabbits as well. “I suppose it is Cecil who will be bringing us our suppers. So when you said that you were a great huntress, you actually meant that your familiar was.”</p><p>Elyse game him a dark look as Cecil padded over to her to lay down before her feet. “Cecil’s kills are my kills, and mine his. Isn’t that right, Cecil?” She leaned down to rub his stomach. She watched as Martim tied the three dead animals to a strap on his pack with twine, then hoisted it upon his back. “You do not plan to cook one for breakfast?”</p><p>“I find it is best not to linger in any one spot in these woods for too long,” Martim replied, casting an eye about. Even in the early morning light, the woods seemed eerie and threatening, the trees blocking his vision from extending out too far. He looked down at her as Cecil got up, stretched, and then bounded into the woods. “Do you not have a pack?”</p><p>“Cecil brings me whatever rations I may need in any land I travel.”</p><p>“Not even for extra clothes, though? Or waterskins?”</p><p>“These are all I own. I wash them often enough. I do have a waterskin, though.” She patted her rags, by her side, where it made a sloshing sound of a half-full waterskin being struck. She scowled at him. “I am no inexperienced traveler, <em>Martimeos.</em> I know how to take care of myself.”</p><p>“Alright,” he shrugged. He shielded his eyes as he looked upwards into the sun to find Flit, circling overhead, waiting for them. “Southwards we go then.”</p><p>And so they traveled south like that, following the general path Flit laid out for them as he darted from tree to tree, his bright red plumage standing out against the dark bark of the bare forest. Though she was a good deal shorter than him, Elyse, unburdened with a pack, was easily able to keep up with Martimeos. The woods were unmarked here by paths, though, and it was slow going wading through the thick carpet of leaves on the forest floor. Cecil traveled along with them, though not always at their side, frequently bounding off into the woods on a whim, though he would return from time to time to trot by Elyse’s side.</p><p>As they traveled, they talked about what they knew of the Art. As impressed as Martimeos was by Elyse’s skill with glamour, she was equally impressed by his ability to manipulate fire and his knowledge of sigils. Elyse also claimed to be able to speak with trees – though they were not very talkative in autumn. She was particularly interested in the grimoire Martimeos carried around with him. He showed her; it was an ink-stained manuscript detailing knowledge of some of the more deadly creatures that might be encountered in these woods, and a few more of those who came from Outside, though she seemed to know a bit more about that than what was written in the book.</p><p>They did not stop until midday, when their stomachs began to growl. Elyse expertly skinned and cleaned one of the rabbits Cecil had bought them, so they might have some hot meat in their stomachs to go along with the hardtack bread. She asked Martimeos to show her what he knew of glamour. The best he could do was inscribe a message on a stone, or change the color of a rock, and he made little progress in the first lessons she tried to give him.</p><p>They traveled on in this manner for two days, following Flit, talking about the Art and trying to teach each other, as they moved southward. Though the journey was not entirely uneventful. The first night, Martimeos woke up to Elyse’s hushed whispers in the middle of the night. She was staring, transfixed, out into the woods, where glowing, dancing green lights were flitting between the trees, a few hundred feet away. Wisps, she said; and they had better stay awake until they were gone, because they would have to run quickly if the wisps moved towards them. They sat in utter silence, watching the wisps together, the wind carrying an eerie, lilting tune towards them, which though it was beautiful, Elyse said they ought to plug up their ears against if it got much louder.</p><p>And the second day, as they were walking, they came across a bundle of sticks tied together oddly, hanging from a tree, in roughly the shape of a man. Elyse claimed it was a symbol left by witches for other witches, and that the message depended on what was left within the chest of the man. Martimeos watched warily as she approached the stick-man and opened up a compartment in his chest. And then she grew deathly pale, and shouted at him to run. They fled from the place until they were both out of breath, and Elyse would not stop trembling, and would not tell Martim what it was she had seen in the stick-man, though he noticed she had blood on her hands where she had pulled open the crude compartment in its chest.</p><p>It was on the third day of travel that Flit led them to what seemed like the first civilized path they had seen thus far. As the sun was setting, the forest opened up onto an old cobblestone road, though it had not been maintained in a long time – in most places now it was just bare dirt, what worn-down stones still existed overgrown with weeds. It was easier traveling, however, than tramping through the forest, and it was not long until they came to a crossroads.</p><p>Martimeos stopped at the crossroads, staring curiously at a broken-off post that marked it. “A sign must have been here at one point,” he mused. “Perhaps it is not far.”</p><p>Elyse stood in the crossroads, watching, as Martim cast about the woods surrounding it, looking for the remains of the sign. Finally he found it, buried beneath a pile of leaves. It had only one location marked upon it, the word “Silverfish” carved into the faded, rotting wood. It looked as if it had once had other pointers, but those had been broken away or rotted away in the wind and rain.</p><p>He was considering this, wondering if “Silverfish” were the name of the village he was looking for, when he became aware that Elyse was calling his name. “Martimeos. <em>Martimeos,”</em> she said, her voice growing louder and more panicked. He looked back at her, and she was wide-eyed. “Hooves,” she said.</p><p>Martim glanced up sharply. Flit was circling about the trees around the crossroads, chirping madly, and when he strained his ears he could indeed hear hooves – heavy hooves – fast approaching. He looked about quickly. Down the westward road, when he strained his eyes, he could see a black figure approaching in the distance. “Come here! Come here, quickly,” he shouted to Elyse, and she scurried out of the road. When she reached him, he grabbed her and swung her behind a tree, then strained his ears once more. The hooves were only growing louder. He got down on the ground, flat, and she got down next to him, and he began burying them both in the dead leaves that lay under the tree. “Now would be a good time for your glamour,” he whispered to her, and Elyse nodded, still wide-eyed, and murmured a few soft words beneath her breath.</p><p>And then they stayed there, hidden beneath the leaves, watching the crossroads, and waited.</p><p><br/>
The hooves grew louder, and louder, thunderously loud – and then, to their dread, began to slow down to a trot as the rider approached the crossroads. A few moments later, and the horse and rider came into their view.</p><p><br/>
The first thing they noticed was the horse. It was a gigantic warhorse, a great shaggy beast, black as night, the silver metal of saddle, bridle and spur standing out against its profile. But the thing that really sent fear coursing through them was what they saw when it opened its mouth. It did not have teeth like a normal horse. Instead, it had fangs like a wolf. Its whinny did not sound like a normal horse’s whinny, either. It sounded like the screech of metal tearing through metal.</p><p>It stopped, pawing with massive hooves at the ground. And a moment later, the rider dismounted. He stood easily seven feet tall, and on his head was a helm fashioned from some manner of cattle’s skull, with long, twisting black horns rising high above his head, black ribbons tied to them streaming through the air. At least, they thought it was a helmet – they thought they could see a man’s face beneath it – but it moved as if with a will of its own. As the rider looked back and forth, its teeth chattered; and in the eye sockets were gleaming yellow eyes. From the back of the skull extended a long, black cloak that covered much of the rider’s body. But at his belt he had a wicked-looking curved blade, and – as he turned – a severed head tied to his belt by its hair, a man’s face too stained by blood and mutilation to identify much more past its gender, a grotesque look of horror marking the poor soul’s final moments.</p><p>The rider looked back and forth, and then called out in some tongue that sounded like stone scraping against stone. And then it took a step towards them. As it drew closer, a wave of revulsion washed over them; Elyse found that her thoughts were suddenly full of terror; thoughts of the rough hands of the rider grabbing her, that hooked blade sinking deep into her belly as she cried out for mercy; she tried her best not to tremble, but the feeling became overwhelming. She almost cried out, but then found Martimeos’ glove clapped over her mouth, muffling her. She looked over at him; he had his other glove clapped over his own mouth, and was shaking, wide-eyed in fear as well.</p><p><br/>
The rider took a few more steps more towards them, until they were almost certain they were spotted and would have to flee for their lives. But then it turned around and swiftly stalked back to its horse, leaping into the saddle once more. It cried out again in that guttural tongue and then quickly turned its mount around, galloping at full speed from whence it had come, back towards the west. They dared not move or speak until the sound of the hooves had faded away for well over an hour.</p><p>Finally, Martimeos stood up, the leaves falling from his shoulders. Elyse stood as well, though she rubbed at her arms as if to wipe something unpleasant from her; the aftertaste of the feeling the rider had given them clung to them, like a thin film of rot. “Pfaugh!” she cried. “I feel – vile. I would very much like a bath.”</p><p>“Aye, me too,” Martim replied darkly. He began to walk from their hiding spot beneath the tree to where the rider and its beast had stood.</p><p>“What was that thing?” she asked, as she followed behind him. Suddenly Martimeos stopped, staring down at the ground. She looked and stepped back in revulsion. Where the horse had stood, its hooves had sank into the very cobblestone, as if they were melting beneath it, and the indentations were full of a dark red liquid that was unmistakably blood.</p><p>“I don’t know. I have heard tale of fell creatures in the mountains to the west. Nothing like this, though.” Martimeos spat at the indentations and muttered a curse. “Let’s go. Foul luck to tarry where a thing like that has trod, I think.”</p><p>They hurried away from the crossroads, down the southern path, Martim no longer caring about the sign or whether it had named the village they were heading toward. Unfortunately, their time hiding beneath the tree meant that there was not much light left in the day – they both would have liked to have been a full day’s travel away from that spot before stopping. Fortunately, as the sun began to set, they heard the unmistakable sounds of a gently babbling brook.<br/>
<br/>
Elyse was the first to hear it; she cried out in relief and ran from the path towards the sound, Martim close behind her. She slid down a steep embankment of leaves, dodging past trees to come to the banks of the brook; it was perhaps three feet wide, and the water was crisp and clear. With a sigh of relief she tossed her hat to the side and lifted her ragged robes above her head, then bent to untie the soft-soled hide boots she wore. After a moment, though, she turned around, looking curiously at Martimeos, who was standing with his back towards her, puffing furiously at his pipe. “Aren’t you going to bathe?” she asked curiously. “I know you must feel as rotten as I do.”</p><p>“Where I come from, ‘tis not custom for men and women to bathe together,” Martimeos answered, without turning around.</p><p>Elyse laughed. “Who cares? ‘Those who practice the Art forego all custom.’ Besides,” she said slyly, “it’s not like I haven’t already seen you bathing.”</p><p>Martimeos cursed, blowing a cloud of blue smoke. “Bathe and be quick!” he snapped. He growled around the stem of his pipe as her tittering laughter answered him, followed shortly by the sounds of splashing water. He tried not to think about the glimpse of her slender pale form he had gotten when she lifted those rags above her head. Of course she wore nothing but boots beneath it. Not that he hadn’t seen naked girls before, but…</p><p>Muttering, he sat cross-legged on the ground, pulling out his grimoire, leafing through the pages to see if he could find anything that sounded remotely like the creature they had seen at the crossroads, doing his best to not imagine what was producing the splashing sounds behind him.</p><p>Eventually, Elyse called out, “Martimeos, would you start a fire?” He put his book away and turned around, and swiftly swore again. She was sitting naked on a rock, kicking her legs idly, long dark hair dripping water; stretched out beside her were her wet clothes, which she had apparently washed. “I would like to dry my clothes,” she said airily. She laughed derisively as he pulled off his black fur cloak and tossed it at her, though she did at least tug it around herself to cover up.</p><p>Martim quickly stacked stone, wood and leaf to begin a fire so that Elyse and her clothes might dry, then headed towards the bank himself, tugging his clothes off along the way. He pulled out a rough woolen cloth from his pocket that he used to bathe and stepped into the water. It was frigid; Elyse must truly have hot blood to have spent so much time in it. He quickly began scraping the dirt of the road from his body, scrubbing extra hard to wipe away the feeling of filth the creature had left him with. Suddenly, feeling eyes on him, he glanced backwards – only to find Elyse staring intently at him as he bathed, legs tucked up beneath her as she perched on the rock. “Would you turn around?!” he snapped.</p><p>“Why? ‘Tis nothing I haven’t seen before. And your body is interesting to look at. Where did you get that nasty scar across your back? Did you know you have a big freckle right above your-” she yelped and jumped, bare legs flashing, as he sent a splash of cold water towards her.</p><p>Martim finished up his bath quickly, hastily shaking himself as he exited the water, not even waiting until he was completely dry before tugging on a fresh pair of clothes. Thankfully, by the time he was done and had returned to the fire, Elyse’s clothes had dried and she had put them back on, and Cecil had apparently caught them dinner, as he laid by her feet while she skinned and butchered what looked to be a pair of squirrels. “Not much meat, but better than nothing,” she murmured as she slid the skinned and prepared corpses onto a pair of sticks to hold over the fire.</p><p>Martimeos sat down on a rock opposite her, pulling out his pipe yet again, frowning at the state of his tobacco pouch as he opened it. It was nearly empty. Sighing, he put it away and merely stuck the pipe in his mouth, chewing on the stem as he watched her work. “You’re quite good at that.”</p><p>She raised a curious eyebrow at him. “And you are not? Preparing animals is a pretty vital skill for any traveler, I should think.”</p><p>“I can do it, I suppose. Just takes me much longer. Never had much practice.”</p><p>Elyse was quiet as she handed him a stick with a prepared squirrel’s corpse twined to it for him to roast over the fire. “What is it you did before you set out on the road?” she asked. “Anything useful at all?”</p><p>Martim frowned at her as he held the squirrel meat over the fire. “My father was a cobbler. I know a bit of that.” The fire crackled and popped, the only other sound that of Cecil’s loud, rumbling purr. “Where did you come from, Elyse? What did you do before you traveled?”</p><p>Elyse didn’t answer him at first, instead staring into the fire. “South and east of here, there is a great swamp. The swamp of Rue Ouest. My mother was the witch of that swamp, and I was in her care. She taught me of the Art and how to survive off the land.”</p><p>“I think I have heard of it from travelers. Though I thought witches were old crones who ate people.”</p><p>Elyse laughed. “Well, she did disguise herself as a crone. She never ate anyone that I know of, though she did kill any man who entered the swamp. Women, though, would sometimes come to her for help. Sometimes asking for silly things, like love potions. Sometimes for more serious things, like help conceiving a child. The first she’d sell some bottled swamp water and send on their way. The second she would actually help.”</p><p>“And what of your father?”</p><p>Elyse fidgeted, running her thumb over the dark ring that decorated her free hand. “I...never met him. I never saw any man except from a distance, before you. My mother would always say they were too dangerous.” She chuckled. “When I was little, there were some loggers that worked at the edge of our swamp. I watched them from afar. I thought they <em>were </em>women. I thought a man was what a woman became when she grew old. I was a bit disappointed when I learned I would never be very tall and have broad shoulders and hairy arms.” She sighed. “Or a beard. I would have liked a beard.”</p><p>“Your mother really kept you so isolated?”</p><p>“Yes. ‘Twas a lonely life. The only people I talked to besides my mother were her visitors. When I was old enough to read I asked them to bring me books, and from these I learned something of men. Though ‘twas some time before I got my hands on one that truly went over men’s bodies in detail.” She winked at him. “Seeing you has been...enlightening.”</p><p>“So glad to be of help,” Martim muttered, feeling the heat rise to his cheeks. “So what set you on the road?”</p><p>“Not so long ago, mother fell ill and died,” Elyse said lightly. “I decided I did not want to spend my life in a swamp, so I left.” She shrugged. “It may seem a sorry end for a witch, but ‘tis the natural course of things, I suppose. Even with all her skill as an apothecary, she could not heal everything. And what about you? What was the place you grew up like?”</p><p>Martimeos had drawn his sword while she was talking, and was currently sharpening it, examining the blade. “Oh, nothing interesting,” he shrugged. Then he yelped as a pebble struck him in the forehead and glared at her.</p><p>Elyse glared back at him, her dark blue eyes alight with anger. “Nothing interesting. Unbelievable. I tell you where I came from and you think you can just reply with ‘nothing interesting’ in return.” She bent down to pick up another rock from the forest floor, this one much larger than a pebble, and glowered at him darkly. “Tell me more, <em>Martimeos</em>, or the next one is going somewhere considerably more delicate.”</p><p>“Fine, fine!” he cried, as she lifted her arm back to throw. “Fine. I too came from the east, though more north. There the land gives way to plains, hills, and evergreen forests. My village was called Pike’s Green. Many farms, mostly potatoes and wheat. The occasional merchant caravan passing through. A quiet place.”</p><p><br/>
“And how did a cobbler’s son learn of the Art in such a simple village as this?”</p><p><br/>
“From a book my family purchased from a passing merchant.”</p><p>Elyse’s eyes widened in surprise. “You did not have a tutor to start you on your path?”</p><p>“...Oh, I did. Though I wasn’t a very good listener.” Martim paused for a quick moment, then before Elyse could speak, laughed, “I mostly just wanted to learn to impress a girl at first.”</p><p>Elyse’s eyes lit up with mirth. “Hah! So, was she impressed?”</p><p>“Yes.” Suddenly Martimeos looked a bit sad, lost in memory. “Lots of my friends were, in fact.”</p><p>“It must have been difficult to leave them all behind.”</p><p>“Yes.” Martim went back to sharpening his sword, growing quiet once more. “It was.”</p><p>“So why did you?”</p><p>The only response was the hiss of his blade against the whetstone for a while. “Just wanted to wander, I suppose.”</p><p>Elyse gave a small ‘hmmph’ and lobbed the rock at him, but softly, so that it only hit his boot. She looked around. The daylight had died, and the shadows were settling in. She slid off the rock she sat on to nestle in a pile of leaves, pulling the brim of her hat down low over her head. “Well, if you are not going to talk about it, I am going to go to sleep.”</p><p>“Goodnight, Elyse,” Martim called absent-mindedly. But she did not sleep, not right away. Instead she watched from beneath the brim of her hat as Martimeos slowly sharpened his sword, white sparks scattering into the darkness from the edge of the blade, not shutting her eyes until he extinguished the campfire with a clap.</p><p>
  <b>4.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>It was early the next day, before they had even stopped for their midday meal, that they reached the outskirts of the village of Silverfish.</p><p><br/>
The first signs of life they saw was an old farmhouse, of white and brown brick and thatched roof, in the midst of a small field, surrounded by worn wooden fencing. But the field was overgrown with weeds, and the farmhouse itself was abandoned, nobody answering their knocks. When they looked in through the windows, the interior of the house was bare except for a kitchen table, nothing else besides some dusty wooden floors.</p><p>“Abandoned,” Elyse murmured. “I wonder why.”</p><p>“Well, the Dolmec did say this village would be cursed,” Martim answered. He pushed on the door to the farmhouse, and with a squeal of rusted hinges, it opened, eddies of dust swirling in the golden light pouring through the windows.</p><p>“You mean you are bringing me to a <em>cursed</em> village, and you didn’t think to tell me?” Elyse snapped. Martim gave her a bashful look, then stepped inside the farmhouse, looking around for any sign of the inhabitants. But there were none.</p><p><br/>
They ate their meal there, some simple hardtack, and continued on their way.</p><p>Their journey continued like this for a while, traveling down the overgrown cobblestone road, the forest around them occasionally broken by the appearance of a farmhouse, almost always barren and its field covered in wild growth. They spotted only one living soul before they entered the village proper – a farmhouse with an actively tilled field, filled with pumpkins and squash. In the middle of the field stood a woman in a rough, gray woolen dress, dirtied from her work, squat and broad. Strangely, over her head she had a rough burlap sack, with a few holes cut out for the eyes and mouth. She stood as they passed by, watching them, motionlessly. When they waved, she did not wave back.</p><p>They passed on.</p><p>Finally, as the sun had begun its journey downward towards the horizon, they reached the village proper, on the banks of a large, clear lake. A sign greeted them as they moved towards the cluster of buildings on the lake’s shores, swinging gently in the breeze, creaking as it did: It simply read “SILVERFISH”, with a painting of a peculiar fat fish beneath it, with a white belly and whiskers and a gleaming silver back. At least, it looked as if the fish had once been silver. It still gleamed in some spots, but in most places the once bright paint had flaked away or faded.</p><p>Here, the buildings were made from the same tan and white bricks as the farmhouses in the countryside, but the roofs were made of wooden slats that looked as if they had once been brightly painted in a variety of colors, though as with everything else here, they were faded now. As they moved through the town, they couldn’t help but notice that even here it looked like many of the buildings had been abandoned for years – houses and shops both. Only a few of the homes had smoke rising from their chimneys. There was, however, a pier that led out into the lake, and even a couple of small rowboats tied there; and two men, unpacking what looked to be a haul of that same silver fish they had seen on the sign from the rowboats into a barrel that stood on the pier.</p><p>They had begun walking towards the men on the pier when someone cried out “Hey! Strangers!”</p><p>It was a woman, old but still with strength in her and meat on her bones, a tight bun of silver hair topping her head. Her skin was tanned and worn from long house in the sun, and she wore a stout woolen dress that looked like it may have at one point been dyed pink, with a stained apron tied tightly around it. Her face was round and somewhat red; as if she had just been exerting herself. She stood in the entryway of a shop that had great bundles of plants hanging in the windows and a faded red roof. She glanced around furtively and waved them over, urgently. “You two practice the Art?” she whispered as they drew close. She barely waited for them to nod. “Get inside, get inside.”</p><p>Inside the shop was dimly lit, most of the light from outside blocked by the plants hanging in the windows. It was densely crowded with all manner of powder, flask and herb, strange multi-colored liquids sloshing in cloudy glass bottles. She lit a candle as Elyse inspected these curiously, a great red one that already had wax spilling over onto the counter, with a stick she took from a small fireplace set into one wall in which something acrid bubbled in a pot. She muttered under her breath as she waved the flame on the stick dead, glancing back and forth between them.</p><p>“Do you practice the Art?” Elyse asked curiously, when the woman did not speak, instead just busying herself behind the counter while she caught her breath.</p><p>The woman cast a disapproving eye at Elyse, sniffing, apparently not liking the look of her. “No, but I have an eye for those who do,” the old woman puffed. Finally she slammed her hands down on the counter, glaring at the both of them. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>Martimeos and Elyse glanced at each other. “I was told to come here by a Dolmec,” he answered.</p><p>The woman drew a sharp intake of breath with a hiss, shaking her head. “Best keep that to yourself,” she muttered, eyeing them suspiciously. “You two come into town talking about the Art and speaking with Dolmecs and someone is liable to swing an oar at your head. I’m Minerva, by the way. I serve as the apothecary for Silverfish.”</p><p>After the two had introduced themselves, Minerva sat down on a stool by the fireplace, stirring the bubbling mixture in the pot with a long-handled spoon. “Are those who practice the Art banned from Silverfish?” Martimeos asked.</p><p>“Banned? No. But more than a few folk around here want nothing to do with the Art. Others...they don’t care as much, but that won’t stop fists from flying.”</p><p>“Why? Does it have something to do with the curse?”</p><p>Minerva tapped her metal spoon against the edge of the pot and laid it down on the floor. “So, you’ve heard of that, have you? What do you know, exactly?”</p><p>“Naught but that a curse exists.”</p><p>Minerva crossed her arms across her chest and glared up at them. “I see. I’ll tell the tale, but pull up a stool. I don’t like talking up at people.”</p><p>She waited until the two of them had retrieved stools from behind the counter of the shop, low wooden ones, and joined her by the fireplace before speaking. Martim shifted uncomfortable as she talked, the stools were low enough that his long legs jutted up towards his chest. “’Twas over ten years ago,” Minerva began, “When the first child disappeared. Not much was thought of it at first. The village figured that perhaps they had wandered off and drowned in the lake. A tragedy, surely, but nothing unusual. We searched, we mourned. But barely had we moved on when the second child disappeared, a few weeks later.</p><p>“That one, too, we didn’t think anything unusual was going on at first. Perhaps a new dangerous jumping spot had opened up in the lake that was treacherous. Perhaps some new odd currents, or some creature...we told our children to stop going by the lake. Sent out search parties again. And then a week later, a third child disappeared. That was when people began to panic.</p><p>“Now people were certain that the first two hadn’t merely gone missing. That someone was going around snatching children. And it only got worse when a few days later, the fourth disappeared. We drove away all the strangers in our town; damn near lynched one poor merchant. Anyone who wasn’t already a couple with child was considered suspicious. Homes and shops being broken into by mobs of parents; looking for any trace of their children. Meanwhile it seemed like every few days another child was going missing. Parents kept them in their house under lock and key, but it didn’t seem to matter. They’d wake up to empty beds, like their children had never even been there. They even raided my shop, some fool got them worked up saying I must be chopping up their children for potions. The nerve!” Minerva sighed, looking sadly into the fire. “Dark times.”</p><p>Martimeos and Elyse were quiet, absorbing all this. “But what does this have to do with the Art?” Martim asked, after a moment.</p><p>“I’m getting to that part,” Minerva snapped. “See, we used to have a wizard around here, name of Zeke. He didn’t live in town – lived in some ruins a few hours ride east. A bit severe, but a good man. Whenever there was a storm he’d come into town, and magic up the fallen trees off of roofs, or push the flood waters back...”</p><p>Martim whistled appreciatively. These were no mean feats of the Art. Zeke must have been well-learned.</p><p>“Anyway. When all this was happening, someone gets it in their head to talk to old Zeke. Maybe they thought he could help; maybe they wanted to accuse him too. But the rider we send out there comes back an hour later white as a ghost. He says he didn’t even make it to Zeke’s place. He says, out in the woods, he sees Zeke’s ghost, walking through the trees, and came back as soon as he saw it.</p><p>“Now things have been getting really bad. Nearly a dozen children gone missing by now. People are already starting to flee the village, unless their kids are next. But some of the parents – some who don’t have any more kids, or who have hopes of finding their missing ones – they’re getting desperate. They send out another party to talk to Zeke. This time, three young men, brave lads. This time, they don’t come back.</p><p>“You can normally make it to Zeke’s and back in less than a day. When it’s been three days, the town gets in a frenzy. Now they’re convinced that not only has Zeke – or Zeke’s ghost – killed those three young men, they’re convinced that he’s the one been taking their kids too. But it’s one thing to be angry at a wizard like Zeke, another thing entirely to go confront them. Nonetheless, a bunch of couples who had lost their only children – maybe ten folk in all – grab torch and sword and head up the way to Zeke’s place.</p><p>“Only one makes it back. Poor Cassie, and without her husband, and her face is all twisted and melted, and she’s deaf and dumb now so she can’t even tell us what happened. But that was it, that was the end. Now everyone who has children or is thinking about having children packs up and leaves. Even while they’re fleeing, children are still disappearing. All told, nearly two dozen gone. All that’s been left ever since are the childless, or those who had no hopes of having another. Been that way for years now. Until...” Minerva sighed once more. “Years later, there was a couple in village who never thought they’d have children again. Thought they were too old. Until, miraculously, she got pregnant again. The Dahlsons. A beautiful little baby boy. Zeke, if it is him, never took infants. Never any child under six, and only one over ten. We thought...maybe it had been years. Maybe if we had the whole town watch him day and night. We posted guards over his bed, never let him be more than ten feet from us….it was the first child the village had in years, everyone loved him. Well, Zeke must have gotten impatient or something, because he took the boy when he was just three years old. Just there one second, gone the next, in the blink of an eye. Everyone’s been especially on edge since that happened. Which is why,” she said, shaking a finger at Elyse and Martimeos, “It isn’t exactly a good idea for you two to go about advertising that you practice the Art.”</p><p>Martimeos mulled over this for a moment after Minerva had finished her tale. “How long ago did the boy disappear? Perhaps we could-”</p><p>But Minerva was already shaking her head. “You’re a good lad for thinking so. But no. He was taken about half a year ago. Whatever happens when these children get taken, it has certainly already happened.”</p><p>Martim sank into silence once more, pondering. “I have never heard of a ghost that takes children like that, though,” Elyse spoke up. “Are you sure that the first rider was not merely...seeing things? Could Zeke still be alive?”</p><p>“No, girl, I have seen his ghost myself since. Stay for a week and you can see it yourself. He comes close enough to be seen from the edge of town regularly. But if you are going to stay, we’re going to need to get your stories straight.” Minerva grabbed the spoon and began stirring the pot again. “Of course, it’s up to you.”</p><p>“Do you have any tobacco in your shop?” Martim asked suddenly. When Minerva frowned and nodded, he sat back, relaxing. “I don’t see why not. I would at least like to see the ghost.”</p><p>“Right.” Minerva rose, brushing her hands together. “I have a guest room in the back of the shop. It is probably best if the two of you stay there.”</p><p>“Could we not stay in one of the empty houses?” Elyse asked, but Minerva shook her head.</p><p>“No, girl. If you did, folk might get curious, come by knocking when the two of you are up to who-knows-what with the Art. This way the only way they can get to you is if I have warning they’re here first. You’d best tell your familiars to stick away from the village next time you see them, though. Folk will get suspicious with funny animals about. Follow me.”</p><p>Minerva led them behind the counter of the shop, into a narrow back hallway, muttering as she retrieved a key ring and unlocked a faded green door. The room she led them into was small, but not cramped, with two beds occupying the corners of the room, a vanity, and a large wooden closet. The floor was covered by a carpet whose original color had long since faded to a sun-bleached yellow.</p><p>As Martimeos dropped his pack down onto one of the beds, Minerva considered the both of them. “You,” she said, pointing at Martimeos, “You could pass as a normal lad. But you...” here she pointed to Elyse and sniffed. Elyse sniffed back at her. “I don’t know about you. Did anyone see you coming in?”</p><p>“A woman, on one of the farms. She had a burlap sack over her head.” Martimeos pulled out his tobacco pouch. He planned on getting that refilled tonight.</p><p>“That’ll be poor Cassie.” Minerva shook her head. “Ah well. She can’t speak to anyone about what she saw anyway.” She turned back to Elyse. “Right, girl, we’ll have to get you into a proper dress.”</p><p>“What’s not proper about this?” Elyse asked, picking at her rags. “I <em>like </em>this dress.”</p><p>“Don’t you argue with me while you’re under my roof,” Minerva snapped at her. “You don’t do as I say, you can risk the beatings if you like. I think I have some dresses in your size here. Ones left behind when young couples fled the village.”</p><p>“Fine,” Elyse sighed, and then she got up and lifted her dress above her head, revealing her pale slender form and nothing else beneath.</p><p>“Right, I think I’ll go grab that tobacco, shall I,” muttered Martimeos, scurrying from the room as Minerva gave a strangled cry of scandalized outrage. He hummed to himself as he searched the shelves of the shop, listening to the muffled shouts of the women from the other room.</p><p>“What do you think you’re doing, you harlot? I don’t care if you are lovers, you stay properly dressed in front of a man, at least when you’re in front of me!”</p><p>“Who says we’re lovers, old woman? What do you care who I get undressed in front of? ‘Tis just a body. You’d think it were a viper.”</p><p>“Right. I was going to give you some silk, but I think you deserve stiff wool. And let’s run a comb through that hair.”<br/>
<br/>
Martimeos took his time filling his tobacco pouch, and then another backup one he had; and then he whistled jauntily as he he counted out coins one by one and laid them in a neat little stack by the counter, giving the apothecary a little extra for the use of her room. By the time he returned to the guest room, knocking on the door before entering, Elyse was sitting on one of the beds frowning and plucking at a shapeless, gray woolen dress pulled over her. Her long, wild black hair was somewhat combed, at least, and tied with a blue ribbon into a loose ponytail about a foot above her waist. “This dress itches,” she complained.</p><p>“It’s not my fault you don’t wear any underclothes, you little savage,” Minerva huffed. She gave Martimeos a look of withering disapproval as he entered, but did not say anything further about Elyse’s cavalier attitude in front of him. “Right. The story for you two is that you’re a young couple from Twin Lamps – we get some travelers coming from there every now and then, but nobody knows it well enough to ask questions – looking for a new home. You’re staying with me for now because the wife needs help with some womanly troubles.” Elyse snorted, earning another strong glare from Minerva. “I’ll tell no one but Ritter – that’s the innkeeper, and the closest thing we have to a mayor – the truth. He’s got a good enough head about him not to judge folk just because they practice the Art. He’ll want to know why I’m taking away what little custom he gets anyway. No talk of Art, no working of Art in public, and you should be fine.” She huffed once more, her hands on her hips, staring at the both of them.</p><p>“Thank you for your hospitality, ma’am,” Martimeos said mildly. “And for the warning.”<br/>
<br/>
Minerva’s gaze softened, she absentmindedly wiped down her apron. “’Tis nothing, really. Maybe someone with knowledge of the Art will be able to tell us more about what’s happened here, even if you can’t solve it. Not that it matters, I suppose. ‘Tis far too late for this village.” She shook her head, then turned towards the door. “I am locking up for the day. Keep whatever you do quiet.”</p><p>She closed the door behind her. Elyse and Martimeos listened to the sounds of her clattering about the shop for a few minutes, before the front door slammed shut as well. Elyse plucked at her dress sullenly.</p><p>“I like the ribbon,” Martim offered.</p><p>“The ribbon isn’t bad,” Elyse admitted, brushing her hair over her shoulder to look at the bright blue ribbon tied in it. Then she looked at him curiously. “What is your plan here, Martimeos?”</p><p>“Hmm?” Martimeos was busy packing tobacco into his pipe.</p><p>“You heard Minerva. It sounds like the damage of the curse has been done. Do you plan on risking yourself to try to break it?” She folded her arms across her chest. “And if so, why should I risk myself to help?”</p><p>Martim puffed on his pipe, blowing smoke out his nose. “The curse is the curse,” he mused. “I’d be inclined to help if there was any children to save, but it sounds as if they’re long dead. But whatever is going on, ghost or no, it sounds like there is a knowledgeable wizard’s lair out there. I think it’s worth a little risk to see that.”</p><p>“Hmm. I suppose.” She growled in frustration as she scratched at her chest. “That’s it. Turn around, I am changing back into my dress. Or don’t. I care not.”</p><p>Martimeos sighed and turned towards the wall as Elyse frantically scrambled at the heavy wool to claw it off her. When he turned back around, she was dressed again in her rags, though she had kept the ribbon in her hair. “At least we should have some time to work on our Art,” she mused.</p><p>“I don’t think that it’s a good idea to work on fire-starting indoors. Especially in an apothecary’s shop.”<br/>
<br/>
“Probably not.” She waggled the ribbon in her hair at him. “Why don’t you work on trying to change this ribbon from blue to yellow?”</p><p> </p><p>Their week’s stay in Silverfish was a bleak one. There was something that just felt unnatural about a village devoid of the laughter of children. Though it was not merely that which was lacking. All the villagers who remained were the childless, bereaved, or those who had never had children in the first place. A deep sorrow permeated the villagers; the sorrow of something gone that they would never get back, something they should have had that they were now too old to hope for once more. The worst of these were the Dahlsons, the couple who had most recently had their child snatched away. He was a lean fisherman of pepper-gray hair and a deep tan, and she was a a baker that worked at Ritter’s inn, a woman who once must have been a magnificent beauty but who now seemed faded and tired. Both of these barely talked to anyone, seeming half-dead.</p><p>They both told their familiars to stay out of the sight of the villagers, and warned them against the nearby wizard’s lair – who knew what defenses might lie out that way – though Flit seemed certain that he could scout it out a bit from the air. And Cecil, though Elyse told him to stay away, nevertheless snuck by the docks from time to time in order to steal fish. One might think the cat himself had a glamour, the way he managed to avoid being spotted by the villagers.</p><p><br/>
Elyse truly loathed the dress Minerva had given her, though, and so she rarely left the room. Which was just as well; it helped with their story that she required Minerva’s attentions. But it did leave Martimeos to do most of the exploring of the village.</p><p>It was very difficult to tell how large the village may once have been. Some time after it had been abandoned, a fire had swept through some of the abandoned homes; these still lay in blackened rubble, nobody having bothered to clear the debris, the ruins standing there for long enough that plant life had begun to grow on them. There were perhaps ten couples still living there, and a smattering of single, childless villagers, including Ritter and Minerva.</p><p>Ritter himself turned out to be a lean, bald man with a ring of thinning silver hair around his head, though he still carried himself as he had once obviously been – a soldier. He still kept a broadsword strapped to his belt, the only weapon besides Martimeos’ sword visible in town. He ran an inn that, unlike most buildings in town, had clearly been repainted recently; called Kingfisher inn, with a sign displaying a black cat with its paw on one of the town’s namesake silver fish. The cat – named King, no less – turned out to be real, though it was too fat and old to do much other than lounge around the inn nowadays, a great ball of ragged black fur sunning beneath one of the windows as Martimeos stepped inside.</p><p><br/>
The inn itself, though it was well equipped with eight bedrooms on the second floor, was barely used; it seemed its most common function these days was for a common meeting place in the common room downstairs, which now held far too many tables for them all to ever be occupied. Ritter rarely bothered to stay behind the counter himself, with barely any customers around; and had no maids hired. If anyone ever wanted a meal, he cooked it himself, albeit poorly. Not that one had to be a good cook – the main fare of the village, the silver fish, was juicy and delicious, and had apparently once won trade and acclaim for the village from afar. He was a kind enough sort, despite the weapon at his side, and shared a love of tobacco with Martimeos. He seemed weary, and resigned to the fact that he would guide the village to its final days. On the side of the inn was a well-maintained stables, though they housed only one horse – the only one in the village – a plodding, gray mare named Bela.</p><p>Martim spent his days either in the guest room with Elyse, practicing Art, or outside scouting about the countryside, or taking practice swings with his sword at a target dummy made out of straw that Ritter dragged out of storage for him at his request. Martim was no expert swordsman – he knew enough not to cut himself, but little more.</p><p>The villagers seemed polite enough; it seemed hard to believe that Minerva was concerned that they might get violent if they learned that he practiced the Art. They asked him what he was doing there, and nodded sympathetically when he told them his wife was staying with Minerva for the time being while he looked for a new home with her. They all advised him against settling down in this town, telling him different varieties of the tale of the curse he had heard from the apothecary. Most were certain it had been Zeke, and some damned the Art in general because of it. Martimeos thought them fools at first – had Zeke not helped them in the past? But upon reflection, he realized that whatever help the wizard might have offered with repairing damage from the storm and forcing back flood waters could have, of course, been gladly abandoned if it meant they got to keep their children.</p><p>As the days wore on, Elyse became more and more frustrated with being cooped up. She began to grumble whenever Martimeos left the room and left her alone, badgering Minerva for a look at her wares just to keep herself occupied, until finally she overcame her hatred of the dress and at the end of the week’s wait began appearing in public. But even then she stalked around the town in a dark mood, plucking and scratching at the dress, sometimes so much that Martim worried that she was going to pull it off in the middle of the street. She got many questions from the women in the village about whether she was with child, or when she planned on having children, the villagers seeming eager to live their wrecked lives through her.</p><p>But finally, on the sixth day, Minerva told them that tonight that Zeke’s ghost should be visible in the woods a short walk from town. Ritter and herself would guide them there, she said; they would not have to worry about the other villagers, who preferred to stay as far away as possible from the specter. And so late at night, when most of the village was asleep, Ritter and Minerva met the both of them outside the apothecary shop. Minerva glared at Elyse when she saw the witch was wearing her rags and her hat; but Elyse just snapped that there was no way she could walk far in that scratchy bag of a dress.</p><p>They departed eastward from town, the light of a crescent moon illuminating their path. Here, the road was barely more than a dirt trail, and there did not seem to be any farms in this direction. The trees on either side of the road cast huge shadows across it, alternatively illuminating and hiding them as they walked along.</p><p>Once they were far enough from the village, Ritter cleared his throat. “So, how long have you two known each other?” he asked, his voice raspy from long years of smoke.</p><p>“Not long. A few days of travel together before we arrived here,” Martim answered. He heard a strangled sound from beside him and knew it came from Minerva, thinking about how Elyse had disrobed in front of him.</p><p>“You might say I knew him for a good deal longer than he knew me,” Elyse said slyly.</p><p>“And the both of you practice the Art?”</p><p>“Yes. Though from what I hear, your Zeke was a good deal more experienced than either of us.”</p><p>“He did have no small skill,” Ritter mused. “Though much of his interest seemed in areas...not practical. I visited him about weekly before the….troubles began. I was lucky to understand even one word in ten of what he said, but the man enjoyed cards. He was….a friend. I never believed that even as a ghost Zeke might take those children, though you have to admit it was an awful odd coincidence. Maybe even if we don’t get those kids back, you two will clear his name.” He cast a sidelong look at Martim and cleared his throat. “Somehow.”</p><p>Martimeos and Elyse glanced at each other as they walked along. “What….do you mean by ‘not practical’?” Martim asked cautiously.</p><p>Ritter sighed, running a hand through where his hair might once have been. “Hard to say. Like I said, when he talked about his research I barely understood what he said. But he was set up in some real ancient ruins, and he was always obsessed with getting Outside. I take it you know what I mean by that.”</p><p>Elyse gave a small gasp, and Martim shook his head. Outside. The worlds outside the world, some reflections, some distortions, some so alien they could shatter a man’s mind. Sometimes, actions taken in the Outside could have consequences in this world – break a vase in an Outside world that was a close reflection of this one, and it might fall over and shatter in this world too. Other times, they had no connections. Sometimes time flowed faster, or slower, Outside. And always in the Outside – Outsiders. Strange, alien creatures that defied sense and logic. Dolmecs, it was said, originally came from Outside. It was a very learned wizard who could ever make his way there – and a very skilled or very foolish one who actually made the attempt.</p><p>Suddenly, over the wind came a curious, lilting hum. “There he is,” whispered Ritter, pulling them out of the road to the cover of the trees. “Look, up there, up the top of that hill.”</p><p>Martimeos looked, and he did not have to strain his eyes to spot him. Up a hill, perhaps two hundred feet from them, cresting it, was a spectral figure that glowed with a dim blue light, shining between the trees, passing sometimes between them, sometimes through them. His form faded in and out, sometimes blurry, sometimes sharp, though his face seemed hidden in a perpetual blur. Even from this distance, it could be seen that he was wearing some finely woven robes that came down to his ankles, left open at the front to reveal crisply pressed pants and a ruffled shirt, and sharp boots. Accompanying him, originating from him, apparently, was an odd, discordant hum that faded in and out.</p><p>But that wasn’t the strangest thing about him. The strangest thing about him was that he walked upside down, with his feet towards the sky, though not perfectly vertical – walking almost as if gravity, and the ground, were at some angle to the actual earth, so that he was pointed almost diagonally, with his head closest to the ground and his feet sticking up in the air. And he did walk, not float – moving his feet, sometimes even rising or falling, for all the world as if he trod upon an invisible ground in the sky.</p><p>“Don’t know why he’s upside down like that,” Ritter whispered, his eyes transfixed by the sight. “Think maybe it had something to with how he died.”</p><p>“I know why,” Martim replied, shaking his head.</p><p>Ritter, Minerva, and even Elyse looked at him in surprise. “Well, why, then?” Ritter asked, after a moment.</p><p>Martim narrowed his eyes, still tracking the spectral figure as it moved away, back deeper into the woods, its light fading over the crest of the hill. “He’s not a ghost,” he answered. “He’s not even dead. He’s a glimmerling.”</p><p>
  <b>5.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>“What’s a glimmerling?” Minerva asked, huffing, drawing her skirts up around her to travel quicker, as they began their walk back to town. “I’ve never heard of one of those.”</p><p>“Neither have I,” Elyse said suspiciously.</p><p>Ritter was quiet, waiting for an answer, as Martimeos walked along, quickly making large strides back to town, lost in thought. Finally, he spoke. “A glimmerling is...something that can happen when a wizard goes Outside, and...comes back the wrong way. A passage to Outside….it isn’t just like a door, see. It’s like….” he drew his sword halfway from its scabbard, and then slammed it home. “It’s like putting your sword in its sheathe. You miss by a bit, and your sword is still going to be in the same <em>general</em> place it should be….but it’s still obviously wrong.”</p><p>“So are you saying he’s halfway Outside and halfway here?” Elyse asked cautiously, but Martim shook his head.</p><p><br/>
“No. He’s all the way here. He’s just <em>here wrong. </em>And that can be very dangerous.”</p><p>They traveled in silence for a bit, digesting this.</p><p>“Think of it this way,” Martim spoke again. “You can play your favorite song on the flute. But it’s going to sound very different if you play it on the harp, or the fiddle. And even more different if you keep the notes but change the strings. A glimmerling might see the world, changed just a bit from how it actually is. Or it might see the world entirely differently from the way we do. So much that it walks upside down. Or,” he added, after a moment, “kidnaps children without even knowing what it’s doing.”</p><p>“So you’re saying it really was Zeke kidnapping those children?” Ritter asked, astonished.</p><p>“I’m saying we don’t even know if that’s what he thinks he’s doing. Zeke could have thought he was hunting rabbits. Or fighting monsters. Zeke might think he’s walking along a beach, picking up pretty seashells. But he’d actually be making children disappear.”</p><p>“But that’s awful,” Minerva gasped. “To do such terrible things and not even know you’re doing them.”</p><p>“That is why glimmerlings are dangerous.” Martim shrugged. “Though glimmerlings also tend to attract Outsiders. It could be that he is seeing something entirely separate from what we see, and his presence attracted an Outsider here that is responsible. Or an Outsider might be controlling him.”</p><p>“I know a few Outsiders who might be interested in children specifically,” Elyse muttered.</p><p>“Can he be...bought back? Put right?” Ritter asked quietly.</p><p>Martimeos considered his answer, and whether or not to be perfectly honest. “No,” he said finally. “That is, they can, but...only with great difficulty, and experience, which none of us have. Your best bet is to simply kill him.”</p><p><br/>
“But what if ‘twas not Zeke who took those children? We’d be killing him for no crime.”</p><p>Martimeos sighed in frustration. “Glimmerlings are <em>always </em>dangerous. It does not matter if he did not take those children. He might pluck off your head thinking he was merely picking a flower. Even if he did not, he is attracting attention from Outside. Things that might do much worse than simply steal children might eventually find him. No, he must die.”</p><p>Ritter seemed taken aback by this for a moment. But then he sighed, and nodded, putting his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Right. I understand. But slaying a wizard like Zeke…”</p><p>“A glimmerling is often easier to kill than they might be in normal circumstances,” Martim replied. “You might walk right in front of them without them realizing you are even there. But you can still put your sword in them.”</p><p>Minerva and Ritter looked at each other, and silence followed the group as they made their way back to town. As they reached the streets of the village, the first gentle lappings of the lake reaching their ears, Ritter spike up once more. “So...will you kill him?”</p><p>Martimeos did not answer. He merely continued striding through the village. Elyse, by his side, looked up at his face. She did not think he had even heard the question. He seemed lost deep in thought. She tugged at his arm when Ritter asked the question again, snapping him out of his reverie. “What? Hm. Yes, I plan to. On the condition that I get to keep what I choose from what I may find in his home. No exceptions for sentimentality on your part or the part of anyone in the village, mind you. What I want from his home, no questions or protests.”</p><p>“I can’t expect that there’d be much in his home we’d particularly be attached to...” Minerva muttered. Then her eyes flashed. “Except, of course….if you find the remains...of the...”</p><p>“I am not a ghoul. I would not want to keep those.”</p><p>“I could accompany you,” Ritter said, patting his sword. “I may be old, but I can still swing a sword as good as ever. And...it would only be right for me to help put him down.”</p><p>Martimeos glanced over at Ritter, looking the man’s lean form and soldierly bearing up and down appraisingly. But finally he shook his head. “No. I think either we take Zeke by surprise and kill him before he speaks, or he would kill us both with a few words. It would not matter how many of us there were. And if I do not make it back, it would be best if you were here to evacuate the village completely. Living near a glimmerling is dangerous. You have been lucky.”</p><p>“Lucky!” Minerva swore. “Lucky to have our children taken away!”</p><p>“Yes,” Martimeos replied simply.</p><p>They passed now in front of Ritter’s inn. Through the window, the curious eyes of King watched them, two green, wary dots in a patch of featureless black fur, the candles lighting the interior of the inn casting his long shadow into the cobblestone street. They stopped beneath the sign, its silver paint gleaming in the moonlight. “Tell me,” Martim asked, “What was Zeke’s familiar?”</p><p>“A snowfox. But it hasn’t been seen since the time of the troubles.”</p><p>Martim nodded, then pulled out his pipe. He was about to pack it with his own tobacco pouch, when Ritter offered his. Martim smiled at him as he took a generous portion of brown leaf from it and packed it into his pipe. Minerva and Ritter watched uncomfortably as he focused and the end of the pipe began smoking without the aid of any flame. “When will you go?” Ritter asked, to fill the silence.</p><p>Martim blew smoke into the air, then coughed. “Tomorrow. I ask the use of your mare. ‘Twill give me time to scout his home.”</p><p>Elyse remained uncharacteristically quiet as she watched Martimeos make plans with Minerva and Ritter, plucking at one of the tatters of her robes, watching with large, curious eyes. When Ritter and Minerva said their goodnights and headed off – Minerva to her home, and Ritter heading in to his inn – Martimeos did not go back to the apothecary shop. He walked down the cobbled streets to the pier, where the moonlight reflected off the calm waters of the lake, ice just beginning to form at its banks, puffing at his pipe, lost in thought. Elyse followed him silently, standing just a bit behind him as he blew smoke rings into the air. Finally, she said, “<em>Martimeos.”</em></p><p>Martimeos gave a small jump, then glanced backward at her, as if surprised to find she was here. “Oh! Elyse. What is it?”</p><p>Her face was unreadable in the moonlight, her eyes large, glimmering as she stared curiously at him. “How is it that you know so much of these...glimmerlings?” she asked quietly. “I have never even heard of them. And my mother was no stranger to the Outside.”</p><p>“’Tis not so surprising. They are rare. I simply got my hands on a book documenting them.” He yelped as Elyse reached out swiftly and pinched his arm, hard.</p><p><br/>
“You are lying to me,” she said softly. “Didn’t you ever learn not to lie to a witch?”</p><p>“Didn’t <em>you </em>ever learn not to draw the ire of a wizard?” he snapped.</p><p><br/>
Elyse laughed derisively at him. “Go on then, mighty wizard. Set me ablaze or make me vanish in a puff of smoke. Turn me to stone. Show me that wizard’s wrath.”</p><p>“Hmmph.” Martimeos frowned at her, chewing on his pipe. But his frown turned into a bashful grin. “Alright. <em>Just so you know</em>, I was not lying about the book. But I have...seen a glimmerling before.”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>Martim had turned back towards the lake, thoughtfully watching some ripples spreading across its mirror-like surface from where some creature had disturbed it some distance out from the pier. “My first tutor,” he said eventually, “had a knack for stepping Outside. And sometimes he would come back as a glimmerling. Never a very….crooked one. He would step Outside into worlds that were close reflections of this one; perhaps how badly crooked you come back depends on how far Outside you go. We thought it was harmless, because we knew how to fix it – he would simply step back Outside and come back in until he had done in right. He still saw the world as it was…mostly. He could only ever tell me what he saw. Sometimes he said the world was full of colors that he did not think he had ever seen. Sometimes he saw the dead walking among the living, and interacting with the world as if they still were alive. One time he came back and he said he could see, across the plains, a strange city, with thousands of lights everywhere, with towers of gleaming metal, impossibly tall. One time he came back and he said Flit spoke with my voice, and I with his.” He chuckled.</p><p>“He must have been...quite the unusual wizard to travel so easily back and forth to the Outside.”</p><p>“He was a fool.” Martimeos shook his head, frowning. “We both were. We did not know the dangers. It...” he paused, blowing smoke. “We were lucky. We got our hands on a book that documented glimmerlings and stopped immediately. There were tales in there to chill your blood. Even the slightest of glimmerlings ended in tragedy. There was a man who came back only slightly wrong. He could….see poetry, you might say. When he looked in his wife’s eyes, he saw stars. When someone was sad, he saw rainclouds above their head. People thought it was romantic. Until he buried his infant son alive, outside of town.” Martim growled around the stem of his pipe. “When he looked at his son, you see, he saw the greatest treasure he could ever imagine. And he didn’t want anyone to take it from him.”</p><p>Silence fell between them. Martim did not look at Elyse, as he stared out over the lake. But he could sense her burning with a question beside him, and waited for her to speak up about it. Finally, she did. “Why did you speak as if you were going alone to face the glimmerling? Did you not want me to help?”</p><p>“It makes sense. Either I manage to put my sword through Zeke before he can say anything, or he kills me. I am confident I can do so; a wizard is still just a man, and a glimmerling a half-blind one. But more people coming along would just mean more people dying if I fail.”</p><p>But it was as if Elyse had not listened to a word he said. She was slowly working herself towards anger. “You think I am too small and delicate to be of use, is that it?” she snapped. “Or you want to keep what you may find for yourself?”</p><p>“I would share whatever I find, fool witch. Did you not listen? ‘Twould be pointless for others to come along and risk themselves. I did not want Ritter along either.”</p><p>“Then it should be no problem if I go alone myself then, should it?” Elyse snapped, her eyes flashing. “No need to wait until tomorrow. I will go right now. You can stay here. Do not worry, I will share whatever I find.” She tossed her hair defiantly over her shoulder at him, and turned to as if to leave. Martim shouted and caught her arm, and she looked back at him with dangerous eyes. But with a sly smile upon her face. “Oh? Did you not want me to go alone?”</p><p>“Fine,” Martim snapped, releasing her arm. “You may come along if you wish.” But Elyse was not satisfied with this. She stood on the pier, her arms crossed, tapping her foot on the worn wood, staring at him, until Martim threw his arms up in frustration. “Fine. Fine. Elyse, would you please come along with me?”</p><p>Elyse made a great show of deeply considering his request. “No,” she said finally, then laughed delightedly when Martim growled in frustration. “I am teasing you. Yes, we will both go tomorrow. I am curious to see what a wizard’s home looks like.” Suddenly she yawned, stretching until her body shook. “I think I will get some sleep. Do not stay out here all night smoking, I want you to be able to keep up with me tomorrow. And, Martimeos.” She grinned. “If you even think of sneaking off without me, I will track you down and live up to the witch reputation as man-eaters.”</p><p>Martimeos’ eyes widened, and he pushed back the half-forged plans he had already been formulating in his head for sneaking off tonight before Elyse noticed. She laughed at him, walking away, shaking with mirth, leaving him there to puff on his pipe, watching as she went.</p><p>It was early dawn the next morning when they met at Ritter’s inn. Most of the village was still asleep, but there were a couple of fishermen out on their rowboat in the middle of the lake, casting their nets. No matter how much Minerva swore, Elyse refused to wear the woolen dress, staying instead in her rags and pointed hat. “I cannot move in that thing,” she snapped at the cursing apothecary. “And barely anyone is awake to see us now anyway.” Nevertheless, Minerva kept glancing nervously at the fishermen out on the lake, and looking worryingly up and down the streets, fretful that she might spot an approaching neighbor.</p><p>Ritter had Bela, his lone mare, gray with age and yet still a plodding, steady horse, saddled, brushed down and waiting, shaking her mane idly, in the street before the inn as they approached. She looked to be a very gentle, agreeable beast – which was good, because while Martimeos had some experience riding, he was no expert horseman, and Elyse had never ridden before at all. She was a bit intimidated at the prospect of being so high up off the ground on a beast she had no control over; she was short enough that she had to be lifted into the saddle, and clung to Martim’s waist with wide eyes as he took the reins, though her tattered robe parted at the sides enough to allow her to straddle the beast.</p><p>Minerva and Ritter wished them luck, and Martim told them that if they were not back by tomorrow to assume they were dead. “I do not expect to fail, but if it happens, I beseech you to move the remaining villagers,” he emphasized to them again. “Abandon the village and post warning signs. Do not stay living by a glimmerling.” Ritter and Minerva just exchanged skeptical looks, and Martim growled, taking the reins and directing Bela away from them, down the path eastward out of the village.</p><p>The path, Ritter had told them, ended at Zeke’s lair; they would not miss it. When they were out of sight of the village, their familiars joined them, Flit a red streak coursing down from the sky, and Cecil strolling out of the woods, yawning lazily and stretching, his tail flicking back and forth. Martim told Flit to fly ahead, high above, and keep a look out for the glimmerling should he be somewhere on their path; Elyse, on the other hand, told Cecil to stay nearby, and to keep an eye out for a snowfox.</p><p>The countryside here was the same dense, autumn-bare forest, though the land broke into more rolling hills and rocky outcroppings, the wind blowing cascades of red leaves across their path. Though they might have reached their destination in a few hours at a gallop, Martim took Bela more slowly, which kept Elyse’s cursed mutterings about the wildness of the beast to a minimum. It was not for her sake that he traveled slowly, though. His eyes constantly scanned the path and the forest around them for signs of sigils; a wizard like Zeke may well have laid protective runes upon the ground that could very well spell their doom. They did not stop for a meal at midday, both feeling too nervous to do much more than nibble on some bread in the saddle, though they did stop to stretch out their aching limbs to prevent themselves from going saddlesore.</p><p>It was a couple hours past midday when they came upon their first oddity. On the side of the road, a pyramid of bones had been erected, as if making a small shrine. Rib, leg and arm bones were stacked delicately, interlocking with each other, and the top was crowned with a circular arrangement of six skulls – three human, and three horse. Beyond being merely macabre, the shrine made them uneasy to look at – something about how the bones locked with each other did not seem natural, and Bela whinnied and would not approach it.</p><p>When they saw this, they dismounted, Martimeos leading Bela some distance away until she calmed down, to tie her to a tree. Best to go now on foot, he said. They must be drawing near. Elyse readily agreed, glad to be down off the beast’s back.</p><p>Flit warned them of the next oddity before they saw it, after they had been walking for barely long enough for the numbness to go out of their legs, fluttering down from a treetop to chirp fiercely in Martim’s ear.</p><p>It was a garden of skulls.</p><p>In the dirt path, as if they had sunk into the earth itself, nine corpses stood upright, most of them with just their skulls peaking out above the ground – though some had skeletal hands peaking out above the dirt as well, and one was buried only up to its chest. Martimeos told Elyse to stand back, and cautiously circled the area, giving the corpses a wide berth. This was sigil work, he was sure of it – but any evidence of the sigil once traced into the ground here had long since faded, its power gone. Cautiously, he stepped into the circle of corpses. When nothing happened, Elyse joined him. “What happened here?” she asked, wondrously, prodding at a skull with her foot.</p><p>“A protective sigil, if I had to guess,” Martimeos muttered, eyeing the corpses. They were most likely the remains of the couples Minerva had told them had gone to face Zeke. “I don’t think it was meant to be fatal in itself. Just to sink any enemies that might be approaching him into the earth. Though once that had happened...who knows what the glimmerling saw when it looked at them. Or what it did.” He grimaced, crouching down to examine a skull. It bore thin, straight lines in the bone in a strange geometrical pattern, the unmistakable sign of a knife having been taken to it. He thought of Cassie, the only woman to have escaped, struck deaf and dumb, with a burlap sack over her head to cover her mutilation, and shivered.</p><p>It was not far past this that the path ended.</p><p>It came to a winding stop, eventually being overtaken by weeds, leading to the ruins that the glimmerling lived in. Upon spotting them, Martimeos and Elyse ducked behind a tree, and peered around its side cautiously to examine.</p><p>The ruins themselves were built into the side of a hill, the entrance being concrete brick forming an arched wall cut into the side of it – not large. It had apparently once had a metal door set into it, but age had left nothing of it but a few rusted scraps of metal staining the gray brick, leaving a yawning hole into utter darkness. The bricks themselves were well-worn too, crumbling in many places, revealing rusted metal supports holding them up within.</p><p>They watched that dark entrance with baited breath, looking for signs of a blue glow, or the lilting hum that had accompanied the glimmerling, but saw nothing, no signs of life. Eventually, Martimeos stepped out from behind the tree, and they approached the ruins cautiously. They peered deep within the entrance, but the light of day penetrated only a few feet within. Martimeos broke off a crumbling chunk of concrete brick and tossed it into the entrance. An echoing clack, and nothing more.</p><p>Martim whistled Flit down to him. No matter how frightening the ruins were, Flit was not afraid to approach – he would have considered it an insult to his honor if he were. Martim whispered to the furious little bird to fly around and warn them if it saw the glimmerling approaching.</p><p>After his familiar had taken off, he took out a dry torch from his pack, and worked his Art until it was blazing bright, casting flickering orange light into the entrance. He also unslung his crossbow from his back, already winched and loaded with a bolt, and handed it to Elyse, who nodded when he asked her if she knew how to use it. And then, holding the torch high above his head to light their path, they entered the ruins.</p><p>The ruins themselves were cold; from somewhere in the darkness they could hear the sound of trickling water. It smelled musty, old, of mildew and rot. Neither of them had the knowledge of who had once built it. The floors were a black and white checkerboard pattern of some material they could not recognize, warped and cracked in many places, the tiles disjointedly separating from each other, though in other areas they seemed to fit together seamlessly. The walls, too, were made of concrete block, though layered with thick off-white paint – at least where they were not stained with rust or thick black mildew, or rot from some plant that had once grown down them.</p><p>About ten feet in, to their left, was a window; Martimeos thought it strange that there should be a window inside, at least one that was not stained glass or decorative in some manner. Curiously, when he held his torch close to peer through it, he could see that thin silver wires were worked <em>into </em>the glass, in a diagonal pattern. The room beyond had a ceiling that looked like it was on the verge of collapse, roots dangling from it as it buckled under the assault of plant life from above, but was otherwise bare. Martim was thankful for that; he did not want to risk even stepping into the room with the ceiling looking as it did.</p><p>They made their way cautiously past the buckled entrance of this room, stepping carefully where the floor had warped as tree roots forced their way beneath it, moving within the small circle of light cast by the torch. The flickering flame danced shadows off the walls of the ruins, causing their eyes to play tricks on them; they felt fire rise in their veins with each step, wondering what was a shadow and what was something that might leap out of the darkness at them. About twenty feet further down, there was the entrance to another room on their right, the door once again rusted away into oblivion. He cast his torch high to illuminate the room. It was smaller than the first, its white walls covered almost entirely in roots and black water stains. But in the corner of the room was a bed that looked at least somewhat recently made; its posts made of carved wood, polished, that had not yet rotted with age. As he stepped into the room, Martimeos noticed that another, similar bed lay in the corner closest by the door. The sheets of both were filthy, and covered in mildew, as if they had not been washed in years, but they had not yet rotted away. And in the center of the room, on the cracked tiles, was a small, carved toy horse, with wooden wheels for feet. Martim cast an eye about the room, searching for signs of anything else, as Elyse stayed at the entrance with her crossbow at the ready, but found nothing.</p><p>Moving further into the ruins, they came to a pair of rooms at once; one, a small doorway straight ahead of them, through which they could see the gleam of torchlight reflecting off of water, and another, a small room to the left, almost tiny. They moved into the room on the left, first. It was small enough that it felt cramped with the both of them in there – in one corner there was a rusted pit in the floor, as if something had long ago stood there but had been torn out, filled with stagnant water.</p><p>However, there was a small table in this room as well, again carved from polished dark wood, and not nearly so worn with age. And on this table sat a large book, broad enough that it would have been cumbersome to carry it in two hands while open, with many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of thin pages filling it. It was bound in rich black leather, and carried no title, but a complex geometrical pattern of overlapping circles and lines was painted into its front with a golden pen. Martim and Elyse prodded at this – it was unmistakably a wizard’s grimoire – but it could be dangerous to open, or even to touch. In the end, without opening it, Martimeos hefted it off the table and placed it in his pack, barely able to squeeze the tome within.</p><p><br/>
The other curious item on the table was, of all things, a sapling, in a wooden bucket built of slats and buckled together by iron rings. Despite living in the darkness, and it being autumn, it looked to be very healthy – though it was small enough to only have a few leaves, they were there. Elyse looked curiously at this plant as Martimeos struggled with fitting the book in his back, nudging it with the tip of the crossbow. It looked as if the leaves were an almost bluish color. Suddenly, eyes going wide with shock, she stepped back and declared: “There is a human soul in this sapling.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“There is. He speaks, in tree-speech, though it seems he barely knows the tongue. And ‘tis hard for a tree to speak where there is no sun and wind, and harder still when it it is so young with so few leaves to rustle. But he speaks, I am sure of it, and he….” she peered at the tree, and then paled. “I...think ‘tis a child. I cannot know more, it is hard to know what he says.”</p><p>“Is that what was done with the children?” Martimeos asked as he stood. “The glimmerling turned them into trees?”</p><p>“One can hope.” When Martimeos cast a sharp glance at her, she frowned at him. “What? ‘Tis not a bad life being a tree, I think. A long life of casting shade for travelers. And ‘tis better than what might have happened to them.”</p><p>The tree and its pot being too heavy to carry, they left it for the moment, and returned to the hallway, going now to the room at the end of the hall. Here was a small room that housed a stairwell made of concrete – or at least it once had. Only a few steps down, the stairs descended into water. Whatever lay on the lower floors of the ruins, it had been flooded long ago.</p><p>“I was hoping there might be more to the ruins than this,” Martimeos muttered, disappointed.</p><p>But Elyse, staring at the water, gasped. “Martimeos,” she said, her face a look of horror, “the water.”</p><p>Martim lifted his torch high, so that it might cast more light over the water. It was surprisingly clear. And the orange light of the torch, filtering down through the water that had drowned the stairwell, revealed…</p><p>Bones. A large pile of small bones at the bottom of the stairwell. Small skulls – children’s skulls – dotted here and there amongst the pile, deep within the water. Elyse put a hand to her mouth to muffle a string of curses as Martim shook his head grimly. It looked as if the glimmerling hadn’t turned the children into trees after all.</p><p>That was all to be found in the ruins; there was nowhere else to go. They stood in the stairwell for a moment, talking quietly to each other, about whether it would be easier to set up an ambush here, within the ruins, or exit and wait for the glimmerling to approach and assault it outside. But time made their decision for them. With a series of angry chirps that echoed off the ruin’s walls, Flit fluttered into the darkness, expertly navigating it until he found Martim, and told him in his bird-speech that the glimmerling was coming. Martim cursed, and ordered Flit to fly, fly out of the cave and wait for him.</p><p>As his familiar flapped quickly out of the ruins, out into the dimming light of day, Martimeos and Elyse quickly devised a plan. Elyse would wait in the stairwell with the crossbow, and Martim in the room where they had found the grimoire and the potted tree. They would hide and wait for the glimmerling to approach – Martim felt quite certain that it would go to the room that held its grimoire – and then Elyse would shoot it with the crossbow and Martim with his sword. If all went to plan, the glimmerling would be dead before it could even open its mouth.</p><p>By the time they had agreed to this, they could already hear the haunting, lilting hum that had accompanied the glimmerling the last time they saw it, drawing ever closer to the entrance to the ruins. Martim quickly dashed out of the stairwell and into the room beside it. With a whisper, the flames on his torch died down enough so that the torch still glowed red-hot but cast no light. This he gently set leaning against a wall, careful not to place it in a damp spot, and then drew his sword, and waited in the darkness.</p><p><br/>
They did not have to wait long. It was only a few moments before the lilting hum drew close, and then began echoing off the cavern walls; only a few moments until the darkness they waited in was lit with an eerie blue light. From his position, Martim could see Elyse crouching in the stairwell, clutching the crossbow to her chest, looking at him with wide eyes, waiting as the hum grew louder and the light grew brighter.</p><p>Martimeos risked a glance around the corner as it approached. It was, as he expected, headed for them, already past the first two rooms. This close, he could see the swirling floral designs in the glimmerling’s robe, the buttons on his ruffled blouse and pants, even the ring he wore on his finger., even as its form faded in and out, first crisp, now indistinct, first almost solid, now translucent. The one thing that was never clear, however, was the glimmerling’s face – it was always a blur – except for a pair of wide, staring eyes. It still walked upside down, and at an angle, its feet almost as if it were walking on the upper right corner of the hallway, closest to Martim, while its head dangled along the bottom left.</p><p>Time seemed to slow down as it drew closer and closer; that humming seemed to drill itself inside their heads. Martim felt like a coiled spring. Finally, it reached the end of the hallway, standing right in front of the room Martim hid in, almost close enough for him to touch. Just as it began to turn, Elyse ducked around the corner and fired the crossbow point-blank at it with a <em>twang</em>, and Martim leapt forward, blade-first, and sunk his sword into the glimmerling’s chest up to the hilt.</p><p>Martim did not see where Elyse had struck with the bolt, but he had his sword buried in the glimmerling’s chest where he was certain the heart would be, and he thought the wound must have pierced its heart and been immediately fatal. But they heard a man scream, a long, warbling scream as if through a great distance, through many tunnels – and then a word that shook Martim to his bones. And then he felt as if he was being crushed.</p><p>His head felt so heavy it seemed as if it might snap his neck, his pack seemed like it weighed a thousand pounds, his arms far too heavy to lift, even his fingers felt like they were made of lead. He stumbled forward, toppling like a statue, clawing at the glimmerling to keep himself from collapsing into the floor, where he was sure his bones would shatter under the weight. To his side, he could hear Elyse struggling to breathe, he felt like he could barely draw breath into his lungs himself. He tried desperately to raise an arm to grab his blade stuck into the glimmerling’s chest, to twist it and finish it off; but he could not lift his arm that far. All he could do is claw with fingers that barely had the strength to respond at the place where the glimmerling’s face should be, to prevent it from speaking again.</p><p>He was slipping down; the hum was filling his head, the blue light of the glimmerling felt like it was cutting into his skull. Desperately holding on to the glimmerling’s robe as hard as he could, he lost his footing, and flipped over. He was still holding on, but now, he was staring at the ceiling, where the glimmerling’s boots met the corner edge of the hallway. Struggling to remain conscious as his compressed lungs failed to draw any air, feeling his bones creak under the strain, Martim noticed that the glimmerling was actually slowly sinking away from the ceiling, being pulled down by his weight. And as his eyes focused, he noticed – something black and serpentine was coiled around one of the glimmerling’s boots. Something alive, and twitching like a tail. And as the glimmerling sank away from the ceiling, whatever was attached to his boot was pulled with it – pulling something long, serpentine, and covered with black feathers almost as if from the wall of the hallway itself.</p><p>Suddenly, the glimmerling’s robes tore, and Martimeos sank down even further. As he did, he felt his shoulder hit the hilt of his sword stuck in the glimmerling’s chest, shifting it. And suddenly, he was no longer crushed under his own massive weight, as the glimmerling suddenly shivered and went still. He crashed to the ground with the corpse, as it suddenly stopped being held up in mid-air.</p><p>As he did, he looked upwards. In the moment before the glimmerling’s glowing blue light faded away, he saw, illuminated, the creature attached to its foot. It looked like a long, thick snake made of jet-black feathers. As he watched, it twisted to face him, revealing a long, sharp black beak, at least a foot long, like a crow’s beak. It opened this, and there was the thundering cacophony of heavy ringing bells, the tolls echoing off the ruin walls. He heard Elyse scream in terror. And then they were plunged into darkness.</p><p>He tried to move, but became tangled with the glimmerling’s corpse. Those bells grew louder, maddening, and then he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his shoulder as the creature struck him with its beak, punching straight through his leathers. He howled in agony as he felt its beak clattering, tearing at his flesh; he tried to grab hold of whatever it was, but his hands passed through it completely. It was as if it was made of nothing but feathers and a beak.</p><p>Suddenly, there was light again. Elyse was waving the still red-hot torch somewhere above him, trying to hit the creature; as she did, the fanning movements rebirthed a small flame upon it, giving them at least some light to see by. He heard the creature’s call of tolling bells once more, and felt its beak leave his shoulder. As soon as he did, he rolled away, and clapped.</p><p>The small flame on the torch leapt up higher. Now he could see things much more clearly. The creature was turning, twisting in midair, undulating as if on some unseen wind, aiming that sharp bloody beak now at Elyse, who swung the torch at it again. It was perhaps six feet long, thick and tapering at the end, its feathers all ruffling as it reared high as the torch passed right through it, as if it had made no contact at all, leaving just some smoking, smoldering feathers. It opened its beak at Elyse, and the bells drowned the world. She screamed in panic, scrambling backwards, nearly dropping the torch, as it coursed in the air towards her.</p><p>Martimeos clapped.</p><p>The smoldering feathers in the creature’s length left behind by the torch burst into orange flame. A small patch of it was on fire, but it did not seem to notice yet -</p><p>Martimeos clapped again.</p><p>Suddenly, flame raced up and down the entire length of the creature, alighting all its feathers at once. Now it stopped pursuing Elyse. And it <em>screamed</em>. Screamed like humongous bells cracking and shattering, a thousand of them all at once.</p><p>Struggling to his feet, Martimeos clapped one more time.</p><p>The flames on the creature grew bright and hot, sinking into its core; it began to spin in the air, desperately trying to put the flames out, shedding stinking, burning feathers everywhere, causing Elyse and Martim to back away lest they be burned. Its cry grew shrill and reedy, as its form grew smaller and smaller, until finally, it disintegrated completely, its beak and a burnt black tongue falling to the floor with a thunk as the last of its feathers drifted away to ash. There was nothing else solid to it.</p><p>Martimeos and Elyse paused, catching their breaths, as they watched the last remaining feathers of the creature burn away. They looked upwards at each other, panting. Martimeos swore. “What <em>was</em> that thing?” he breathed, raggedly.<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Elyse was about to answer him, when she noticed the blood coursing down his arm. “Did it bite you?”</p><p>“Nowhere important,” Martim muttered in reply. But before he knew it, Elyse had swept towards him, holding the torch to light his face, her large, dark eyes filling his vision. She apparently did not like what she saw, for her eyes widened, and the next thing he knew, her hand was on the side of his face.</p><p>“Martimeos,” she said urgently, “Stay with me. We have to go. We have to get back, right now.”</p><p>“Should we not at least-” Martim protested, but she hushed him.</p><p>“You are poisoned, and if we do not hurry, you will die. You must stay awake to ride Bela back to town, for I cannot, and if you fall unconscious you will surely not survive.” She slid her hand to his neck in an oddly gentle manner. “Feel my hand, Martimeos; I am your anchor to the world of the living. Do not slip. Let us go.”</p><p>She dragged him from the ruins, ordering him, as she did, to remove his gloves. After he did so, she twined her hand in his, tightly. “If you feel yourself slipping, focus on the warmth from my hand,” she told him.</p><p>Martimeos did not feel poisoned, at first – he felt fine. The wound was not numb, as might be expected of poison, and he did not feel like he could feel it working through his veins. But by the time they had made their way past the garden of skulls, past the odd shrine – which seemed now to have collapsed of its own accord – and back to Bela, he knew that she was right; something was wrong. He felt sluggish, weak, and the corners of his vision had begun to darken. His fingers fumbled as he untied Bela, and he had trouble hoisting himself into the saddle, and even more trouble lifting up Elyse behind him. He felt cold, much too cold for autumn.</p><p>As he guided the horse back onto the dirt path, he felt Elyse hugging him tightly from behind. She slipped them beneath his leathers, beneath his shirt, to press them against the bare skin of his chest. He would have protested, but they felt like the only warm things he could feel right now. In fact, they almost felt too warm, they almost felt scaldingly hot. “Ride, Martimeos,” she whispered into his ear. “As fast as you can. Be strong, wizard. Concentrate on the warmth of my hands. Even if you can feel nothing else, do not let that slip from you.”</p><p>Martimeos raced Bela down the dirt path, pushing the beast until it frothed at its bit. Behind him, Elyse closed her eyes in terror as the trees whipped past, far too quickly. She cursed herself a fool for getting on this beast and telling Martimeos to push her as fast as he could while he was in his condition. But nevertheless she urged him on.</p><p>As they raced back to Silverfish, Martim’s condition quickly worsened. Feeling unseasonably cold quickly progressed to feeling colder than he had ever felt in his life, and then so cold that he felt numb, the feeling going out of first his fingers, then his hands, then his arms and legs. Then his vision began to fail. Darkness crept in at the corners of his vision, then it blurred, and then it felt as if he were nearly blind. He sunk into a dark, numb stupor, slowly feeling as if his senses were being cut off from the world. It did not help that as they rode back, the day progressed first to twilight, and then to darkness itself. He did as Elyse bade him, and concentrated on the feeling of her hands wrapped around his chest; they now felt like two bars of iron heated red-hot pressing into him, but when he could feel almost nothing else, he was glad for the pain. She whispered encouragement to him as they galloped along. “You are strong, Martimeos, very strong. You are doing very well. Think of the things we will learn from Zeke’s grimoire, eh? Enough to impress any pretty girl, I am sure. Think of that, Martimeos. Think of kissing pretty girls. Does that start a fire in you?” She paused. “I’d give you a kiss myself, were we not on this horse. Think of-”</p><p>But her words faded away. As if from a great distance, Martimeos heard the long, mournful toll of bells, large iron bells. “I hear them,” he muttered. “I hear bells...”</p><p>“Do not listen to them, Martimeos! Listen to my voice! Look ahead, it is the village! We are nearly there! Do not listen-”</p><p>But Martimeos could no longer hear her. He slipped away, into a world of cold, dark numbness, and the endless tolling of thousands of bells.</p><p>
  <b>6.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>Elyse gave a cry of alarm as Martimeos slumped and collapsed in the saddle, and she was pulled out of it with him to collapse on the side of the path in a heap, the air driven from her lungs. Bela, pushed beyond the point of reason, continued racing ahead, towards the village, the first house of which was a mere hundred feet away. She landed on top of Martimeos, which broke most of her fall, but she almost wished she hadn’t. She could handle a broken bone right now; she didn’t know if he could.</p><p>As soon as they stopped racing so fast on Bela, Flit fluttered down around them, chirping frantically, trying to peck at his master’s face. Elyse gasped a curse when she saw it. Half of Martim’s face was black and completely cold to the touch. How he had kept conscious so long was nothing short of a miracle.<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>She held his hand in hers, as soon as she could draw breath she screamed for help at the top of her lungs. Thankfully it was not yet too late at night; she could see in the village that villagers were still milling about, and they came running at the sound of her voice, though not nearly quickly enough for her liking. The first to reach her were two grayhairs that she recognized as fishermen, thankfully not too old , and thick with muscle from a lifetime of labor. They looked at her and her dress curiously as they approached, slowing down. “Please!” she shouted at them, motioning to Martimeos. “He needs care, he needs to be bought to the apothecary!”</p><p>They glanced at each other, but did not question. They immediately hoisted Martimeos up between them, one taking his chest, the other his legs. Flit perched on Martimeos’ chest as they carried him along, chirping uproariously, and Elyse followed, still holding onto his hand, wondering what the cardinal was saying. Wondering if it were a dirge.</p><p>Other villagers had caught up with them by now, Ritter among them. The innkeeper stared wide-eyed at the state of Martimeos, looking at her with his eyes full of questions. Fool man, the questions would have to wait. Five other villagers now crowded around as well, and more were approaching, all babbling irrelevant nonsense.</p><p>“Aren’t you that young couple? What were you doing out by that way?”</p><p>“Why are you dressed like that?”</p><p>“What is that bird doing?”</p><p>They still moved along, however, Elyse ignoring their questions, until one tiny, shrill voice cried out: “She’s a witch!”</p><p>Elyse almost howled with frustration as the fishermen carrying Martimeos stopped. A small woman, older than most, wizened with age, but her eyes flashing clear anger, stepped forward from the crowd, jabbing her finger at Elyse. “She’s a witch! I knew she wasn’t a proper young woman! Minerva’s been hiding a witch from us!”</p><p>Silence fell among the crowd. The fishermen turned to look at Elyse, their expressions growing dark. “Ungrateful fools,” Elyse hissed. “He and I have just broken your damned curse. And now you’re just going to leave him here to die?!”</p><p>Astonished murmurs broke out among the crowd, skeptical mutters of ‘The curse is broken’? Then one loud, authoritative voice rang out, clear as a bell. “Alright, you louts,” and everyone suddenly jumped to turn to its source. Ritter had his chest puffed out, his hand on his sword, glaring at the crowd. “You heard the young lady! Get him to Minerva’s shop, quick now, move your pathetic old bones! No questions!” he roared, as someone tried to speak up. “You’ll get your answers later! Well, what are you waiting for, you scum? MOVE!”</p><p>That last shout carried so much force and authority that the entire crowd nearly jumped, and the fishermen began practically running with Martimeos between them. Elyse flashed Ritter an appreciative smile as he jogged alongside them.</p><p>Minerva rushed out of her shop as the crowd approached it, her eyes wide, wiping her hands on a rag. “Someone told me I was needed,” she huffed, “What...” and then she saw Martimeos, and her expression went grim and businesslike. “Right. Get him to the bedroom in back. You two! Grab a tub from ‘round back and fetch me some ice and cold water from the lake.” Elyse followed Minerva into the shop as the fishermen maneuvered Martimeos’ body around the narrow space, but when another villager tried to follow them in, Minerva spun around and roared at the crowd around the door. “NO! Shop’s not open! Go home now!”</p><p>“Aw, come on, Minerva,” came a voice from the crowd. “We wanna know what’s going on.” General rumblings of agreement accompanied this.</p><p>“We wanna know what’s going on,” Minerva replied in a mocking voice. “What’s going on is that the shop’s closed, and if you try to take a step in here I’ll beat you bloody. And then I’ll get Ritter to do even worse! Go home!” She slammed the door behind her and bolted it, leaving behind the muffled sounds of angry villagers arguing with Ritter.</p><p>The fishermen bought Martimeos to his bed, removing his pack before laying him down on it. When Minerva entered the room, she took one look at the wizard before asking the fishermen to help undress him, as well. They quickly stripped him down, even his underclothes – propriety played second fiddle to necessity, it seemed. Elyse did her best to keep her hands on his. She knew that with this kind of poison, an anchor to the world of the living could mean the difference between life and death.</p><p>Martimeos’ body was a horror. A large, bloody wound pulsed in his shoulder, still gouting blood with each heartbeat. While the rest of his body was cold, that wound was scalding hot. But more concerning than that was that tendrils of black skin extended from it, covering his chest, his neck, half his face, running down his leg...it almost seemed as if you could see them spreading with every pulse. Flit, who had come in with them, hopped up and down his master’s body, pecking at the black tendrils as if he could peel them off himself.</p><p>Minerva swore, and then ran to the front of the shop to fetch some ingredients. The fishermen answered a knock on the door; it was the tub of ice Minerva had asked for, which they placed in the corner of the bedroom, after which Minerva politely asked them to leave. “Uh, miss,” one of the fishermen said on the way out, “I’m sure he’ll be fine. Minerva’s real good, she knows her stuff.” When Elyse didn’t answer, he shrugged, and moved out the door, pushing his way past the crowd that still stood there, growing more agitated.</p><p>Minerva entered the room again with armfuls of leaves, powders and bottles, dumping them unceremoniously on the bed. As Elyse watched, she broke off a chunk of ice from the tub, placing it on the wound, and then blew first a yellow, then a green, then a purple powder into it. Elyse knew a bit of the apothecary trade – it had been her mother’s expertise, after all – but she had always been more interested in the Art; she didn’t recognize any of the plants Minerva was using, the flora of this land not as familiar to her as that of her swamp. She had some minor ability to heal with the Art – healing through the Art was very complicated and difficult – but she knew it would be useless here; in cases of poison healing through the Art actually accelerated it. And the poison was the real danger here, not the flesh wound.</p><p>Minerva worked quickly to mash several leaves and berries into a mortar and pestle and smear the paste over the wound, tying it down with a leaf. Then she uncorked a bottle of blue liquid and poured it into Martimeos’ mouth, pinching his nose and rubbing his throat until he swallowed. Then she waited. And watched.</p><p>After a while, it seemed like some color returned to Martimeos. His hand in Elyse’s grew warmer, the black tendrils stopped spreading, and even retreated a bit, Flit following their retreat and chirping as if they were fleeing his intimidation – but only by an inch or so before they stopped. Minerva uncorked the bottle of blue liquid and forced some down Martimeos throat yet again; but this time if they moved, it was imperceptible. Finally, Minerva shook her head and sighed. “Well,” she said, “That’s that, then.”</p><p>“What do you mean, that’s that?” Elyse snapped. Minerva just gave her a pitying look. “What! Get some more of that blue stuff! Do you need ingredients? Tell me what they are, and I will go fetch-”</p><p>But Minerva shook her head. “No, girl. Any more and it would be the antidote that killed him, not the poison.” She sighed again, collecting the empty bottles and her mortar and pestle. “We can wait until the morning. Perhaps he’ll recover. But if not….” she paused, becoming quiet. “I...have some ingredients that can give him a peaceful, painless death…”</p><p>“What nonsense!” Elyse finally released Martimeos’ hand – it seemed he would be good for now – and stood, hands on her hips defiantly. “Living in this sleepy village must have addled your brains. He’s strong, he rode all the way here after being poisoned. He can make it, he just needs a little guidance.”</p><p>Minerva did not snap at her, or scold her. She just looked at Elyse sadly as she walked back up to the front of the shop, slowly placing the bottles and mortar and pestle back in their place. Elyse was about to snap at her again when the alarming sound of shouts and yells came from outside the door.</p><p>Elyse accompanied her as she went and cautiously opened the door, and gasped at the sight that greeted her.</p><p><br/>
Ritter stood in front of her shop, hands on his sword, the two burly fishermen at his side, glaring defiantly at a crowd of twenty villagers that had gathered, one or two carrying torches. A babble of arguments rose from the crowd, occasionally boiling over into angry yells. Ritter was yelling back, threatening them, but had not yet drawn his sword. When Minerva opened the door, revealing Elyse peering out curiously behind her, someone in the crowd shouted “There she is!”</p><p>Ritter finally drew his sword as the crowd pressed forward, dealing out stinging slaps with the flat of the blade, and Minerva was shouting, and there were angry yells of “Witch! Witch!” and finally Elyse had had enough.</p><p>“SILENCE,” she shouted, pushing her way past Minerva out the door. She glared out over the crowd, which took a step back from her in trepidation. “Idiots! Fools! That’s right, I am a witch. The Witch of Rue Ouest. And what’s more, HE-” here, she pointed back into the shop - “is a wizard! Eh? What do you think of that, grayhairs? We have both just done you a huge favor, and broken your curse. That’s right, it’s broken – no, I won’t tell you how right now! Wait until tomorrow! Right now I have to go in there and heal him, since your bumpkin apothecary cannot. And if I hear so much as a mouse’s peep tonight – if any of you dares to enter that shop – I’ll make you rue the day you were born! I’ll hex you ‘til your boils have boils! I’ll wither your crops and poison your lake! I’ll haunt your nightmares! And when HE wakes up, he’ll burn your whole worthless village to cinders! Leave not one stone stacked upon another! You’ll BEG for the days of the old curse…!”</p><p>As she spoke, she jabbed her finger at the crowd, stalking forward; despite outnumbering her, and despite her being shorter than all of them, they stepped back with every step forward she took, huddling against each other, their eyes growing wider and wider with fear. She stopped advancing finally, glaring at them. “So,” she hissed, “Am I going to be left alone to work my healing tonight?”</p><p>The crowd murmured, subdued, vague noises of assent.</p><p>“Good. So go home.” She glared as the crowd continued to mill about, moving away only slowly. “Go HOME!”<br/>
<br/>
And with that, bats flew from the tatters of her dress; bright venomous swamp-snakes slithered out from beneath it, coursing towards the crowd. They screamed in panic and fled; one man dropped his torch in the street where it hissed dead as it hit a puddle. Of course, only a few feet from her, the bats vanished in a puff of smoke, and the snakes melted into the ground, but she still looked at them approvingly. That was probably the best glamour she had managed so far. Teaching Martimeos had taught her a bit, as well.</p><p>She turned back towards the shop, where Ritter and Minerva stood dumbfounded. She glared at them as she stomped back. Minerva, at least, did not say anything about having been called a bumpkin apothecary, which Elyse did feel a bit bad about but was too mad to care right now. Ritter, however, opened his mouth, and she snapped at him. “Not a mouse’s peep! That means you too! The both of you! Go home!” And with not another word, she slammed the door of the apothecary behind her and bolted it.</p><p>Once inside the apothecary, she sighed. She took a moment to search the shelves for an ingredient she knew she’d need. She quickly located it – the roots of a flower known as Lover’s Lament. She popped a small portion of the roots into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully, ignoring the bitter taste, as she made her way back to the bedroom.</p><p>In the bedroom, Martimeos was still there, looking the same as she had when she left him. Flit was there, eyes closed, nestled on the pillow next to his master’s head; when she opened the door the little cardinal opened one eye and burbled at her, looking annoyed. “Come here, little one,” she said quietly, as she extended a hand. “I promise I will do everything I can to save your master. But you will need to leave us alone.”</p><p>Flit looked at her hand warily for a moment. Then, with a chirp, he fluttered over to it, alighting upon it and preening himself. She delicately carried him to a window, and opening the shutters, released him, watching as he fluttered out into the night. Then she turned back to Martimeos and put her hands on her hips, looking at him.</p><p>The creature in the runs, the snake of feathers...she knew what it was. It was a creature called a Mirrit, and it came from the Outside. A specific world of the Outside, one that her mother called ‘The Land of Death’s Door’. A Mirrit, supposedly, tried to intercept souls on their way to true death, consuming them before they could know peace. But they also did not necessarily stay put. The Land of Death’s Door was….Elyse did not know too much about the Outside, but her mother had said it was ‘close’ to our world. A Mirrit could make its way into this world, particularly in places where people suffered from lingering, wasting deaths. Or, apparently, where there was a glimmerling.</p><p>And she knew the effects of its bite. Its poison would try to drag its victims into the Land of Death’s Door. In his mind, Martimeos was probably there right now. It could be slowed, or even reversed, by giving the victim an ‘anchor’ to the world of the living – the touch of warm flesh. Though it was particularly effective if it were a lover’s touch. Or kiss. Some reminder, the stronger the better, of life and its pleasures.</p><p>There was just one problem with that. It was true what she had told Martimeos. Her mother had always said men were dangerous. What she hadn’t mentioned, however, was her mother’s other warning. That <em>she </em>was dangerous to <em>them. </em>She still remembered her mother’s words. <em>“Your father’s blood runs dark within you, child...”</em></p><p>Her father….</p><p>Elyse twisted the large dark ring on her hand fretfully. Then she sighed, tossing her hat onto her bed, approaching Martimeos, wincing at the black veins beneath his skin. “Well, at least you are good-looking,” she told him, as she bent down and placed a kiss on his lips.</p><p>His lips were cold, though, and did not respond to the touch of hers at all. She frowned, and tried again, kissing him longer, but still there was no sign of life, no warming of the skin, no retreat of the black tendrils in his flesh. She fretfully twisted her ring once more, then sighed. “A kiss not enough for you, is it,” she muttered. “I thought it might not be.” And with that she lifted her dress above her head, kicked off her boots, and slipped into bed with him wearing nothing but her ring, drawing the sheets above them to keep them warm.</p><p>As she pressed her flesh against his, she felt a dark fire begin within her, and her normally cold ring grew warm. But it was nothing uncontrollable – the Lover’s Lament helped with that. And he definitely seemed to respond. He stirred, murmuring, and his flesh began to warm as she pressed against him. “That’s right,” she whispered. “Let my touch guide you back, Martimeos. Shame you aren’t awake to enjoy it, isn’t it.”</p><p>She lay there, holding him, one of his arms wrapped about her, keeping an eye on the black tendrils in his skin. They began to retreat, slowly, as he warmed. She was glad to see it. He did have a nice-looking body, after all. And she thought he liked hers, as well. He might be embarrassed to see her nude, but she had caught him glancing peeks at her legs when he thought she wasn’t looking. Such a silly little dance, she thought. If you liked to look, why not look?</p><p>After a while, she thought the retreat of the black tendrils across his skin had slowed, so she bought her hand to his face and leaned up to kiss him again. This time, his lips were warm, and the kiss was longer. She felt the fire within her flare up, and for a moment, her eyes closed, she lost herself in the kiss. She opened them, checking again on the black tendrils. They had retreated considerably from that; now there were none on his face or legs, and barely any on his chest. “Hmm,” she said to herself. And so she kissed him again, the fire rising in her even more; her ring grew hot on her finger. She broke it off, breathing heavily. Now, there were barely any black tendrils on his body at all. They were all localized to around his shoulder, barely protruding outside of the poultice Minerva had placed over his wound. She smiled to herself, she knew all he needed was a little guidance. One more kiss should finish off the poison. One more she placed her lips upon his.</p><p>This time Martimeos kissed back.</p><p>She barely had time to react as his arm pressed her into him, his lips moved to meet hers, barely had time to think before the fire rose in her body and she lost all thought, knowing nothing but the feeeling of him pressing into her, the feeling of the hungry, desperate kiss, the feeling of her body being aflame, for what seemed like an eternity. “W-w-wait,” she panted, gasping, pulling back, when finally she had the willpower to. “Don’t...”</p><p>But Martimeos was still asleep. He had kissed her back in his dreams.</p><p>She fell out of the bed, her legs shaking and trembling beneath her as she crawled on the floor to the wall, as the fire and uncontrollable hunger raged through her body. This was….she had never felt this before. Never felt her father’s influence coursing so clearly through her veins like this. Every touch, of everything, sent new waves of fire screaming through her body, new fresh urges of hunger.<br/>
She leaned herself up against the wall, breathing heavily, feeling her eyes drifting over to Martimeos. No, she couldn’t let that happen. She stubbornly fixed her eyes on the ceiling. If she looked at him right now, she didn’t think she’d be able to stop herself. She tried to stop her legs from trembling, tried through willpower to force back that fire growing in her, that dark fire that originated in her lower belly and spread everywhere, but nothing was working. It was only growing stronger, and stronger. She hissed, as the ring on her finger grew too hot for even her to wear, slipping it off.</p><p>This only made the fire into her into an inferno. Before she even knew it, she was halfway back to Martimeos’ bed, the throbbing hunger in her feeling strong enough to split her body in two. “No!” she cried, tearing herself away, turning around. As she did, she caught a glimpse of herself in the vanity mirror. Two dark, pointed horns jutted out of her hair, rising six inches above her head.</p><p><br/>
She clutched her stomach. The hunger burnt so hot it ached. Suddenly she remembered, looking in the corner – the tub of ice water.</p><p>She bounded across the room towards it, sitting down in it, yelping a bit at the feel of ice against her bare skin. She plunged her ring into it, too, to cool it off. Using a ladle, she dripped cold water and ice over her head, soaking her hair, until the cold sank into her skin, her flesh, her bones, until it drove the fire from her.</p><p>In the end, she sat silently in the tub, blowing her wet hair from her face, the fire in her dead, staring sullenly across the room at the slumbering form of Martimeos. She knew it was foolish to feel anger at him, but it was there all the same.</p><p>She stepped out of the tub – all the ice had melted, and the water was lukewarm now – and slipped her now ice-cold ring back onto her finger. She grabbed a towel to pat her hair dry, looking at herself in the mirror as she did so. No more horns.<br/>
<br/>
She looked down at Martimeos as she dried her hair, considering. She knew she shouldn’t, but...it had felt good to lay with him. The fire within her began again, at that thought, but low, small, manageable. She tapped her foot a few times. Then she tossed her towel onto her bed, slipped into Martimeos’ bed again, and drew the sheets up around them. It should be fine as long as they did not kiss. She wrapped her arms around him, curling up by his side, closed her eyes, and went to sleep.</p><p>
  <b>7.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>Martimeos had a long, terrible nightmare. A nightmare about a place of utter dark, and cold that sank into his core, into his soul. A nightmare of a thousand ringing bells, and the only things he knew were the endless cold, the endless tolling of bells, and the glimpse of circling, undulating, feathered beasts circling him in the dark, going round forever, and ever…</p><p>But then something warm, soft had drawn him out, something that first soothed him and then filled his body with fire, with life. He had felt himself sinking away from the dark, the feathered beasts roaring at him with the furious tolling of bells, pursuing him but unable to touch him as he fell away, away...away into a normal sleep, of pleasant dreams of kissing and squeezing a soft girl as she laughed at him and called him a fool wizard.</p><p><br/>
Eventually, Martimeos opened his eyes. He was...in the bedroom in the apothecary’s shop, the bright morning light streaming in through the windows. How had he got here…? The last thing he remembered was….that creature, in the ruins….some dim memories of racing out, Elyse pulling him along...not much more than that.</p><p>Suddenly, Martimeos realized that not only was he pleasantly warm, but Elyse….he looked down. She had her face pressed against his side, snoring peacefully, her long dark hair trailing off the side of the bed. He frowned at that. What – then, he suddenly realized he was naked. And – he lifted up the sheets, seeing Elyse’s bare form pressed into his, and yelped and jumped back so hard that Elyse fell out of the bed with a shout of her own, suddenly jolted awake as her rear slammed hard into the floor. “Ow! Well good morning to you too,” she snapped, glaring at him.</p><p>“What’s going on?” he asked, so baffled that he didn’t even care that she was sitting there on the floor in nothing but her skin. “What were you doing in my bed?”</p><p>“Sleeping, obviously.”</p><p>“Speak plain, witch!”</p><p>She folded her arms, getting to her feet. “Oh, nothing. Just saving your life, is all. <em>You’re welcome.”</em></p><p>“Elyse,” he intoned, an edge of anger coming into his voice, “Tell me what happened. Explain.”</p><p>“Fine. That creature that we fought in the ruins – you remember that? ‘Tis called a Mirrit – bit you and poisoned you. We rushed back to the apothecary’s, but her treatments could do little for you. Lucky for you, I have some knowledge of Mirrits and their poison. That they can be treated by giving the victim a taste of life to drag them out of the darkness. So...” she gave him a wicked smile. “I bought you back by reminding you of the flame of life….with my flesh. And finally broke the spell with...” here, she raised a hand in mock modesty to her cheek, giving him a look of wide-eyed innocence. “A kiss. ‘Twas like a fairy tale.”</p><p>“Did….did we...”</p><p>“I went no further than kisses and warming your body with mine. ‘Twould be too great a shame if you were not awake for us both to enjoy <em>that.” </em>Elyse smiled at him, but Martimeos just stared back at her. Suddenly she realized that she was naked, and he was not bothering to look away; in fact, he was looking at her with something like desire. She felt the fire grow in her and the heat rise to her cheeks and laughed nervously. “I jest! Though a man’s body does make a good pillow.”</p><p>Martimeos looked down. “I...see. Thank you, Elyse. I suppose you were right about the fact that we should have tackled it together, as well.”</p><p>“Oh, that’s right. I hadn’t even thought about that. I-” suddenly she gawked as Martimeos tossed aside the sheets and walked over to his pack, rooting around in it for something, not bothering to cover up.</p><p>Martimeos glanced at her astonished look. “If you’re not going to care about it, I don’t see why I should,” he shrugged. “Seems silly to bother with modesty at this point. You’ve seen it all.” Finally, he retrieved what he had been looking for in his pack – his pipe.</p><p>“Should have known you were going for that,” Elyse laughed.</p><p>Martim grunted as he tamped his tobacco down in the pipe’s bowl. “This...Mirrit,” he asked. “What else do you know of it?”</p><p>“’Tis an Outsider. I suspect ‘twas the Mirrit who preyed upon the children. They are drawn to places where life fades; children who burn bright with the flame of life dwindling away would be a fine meal indeed. Though they prefer lingering deaths….” Elyse grew quiet, serious for a moment. “Perhaps ‘tis best not to think of what happened to the children before they perished. Maybe best not to tell the villagers.” Her eyes widened in alarm as Martimeos’ legs suddenly wavered beneath him and he sat down upon the bed before he collapsed. “Are you alright?”</p><p>“Fine,” Martimeos muttered. “I just feel...weak. Like I ran a hundred miles and then fasted for a month.”</p><p>“Let me take a look at your wound. I would like to make sure the Mirrit’s poison has completely left you.”</p><p>He sat patiently as she unbound the leaf poultice at his shoulder, doing his best to ignore her nudity. If she was going to do that, he was going to show her that it wasn’t going to get to him. Finally she unbound the poultice and gasped, and Martim turned his head to look at the wound in his shoulder.</p><p>It looked mostly like a healthy wound – nothing too serious, a red gouge in his arm roughly the size of a coin, though it felt like it went deep – with no signs of inflammation or infection. But protruding from the wound was a dark, jet-black, smooth bump. “What <em>is </em>that?” Elyse asked, prodding at it.</p><p>Martin set down his pipe, and poked at his with his fingers. It wobbled in his wound. It felt….loose. He gripped it with his fingers, and with a snarl and a sharp lance of pain, slowly pulled it out of his shoulder. When they had washed the blood off it, it revealed itself as a small, jet-black egg, so dark it seemed almost made of shadow, no larger than a robin’s egg. When Martimeos held it to his ear, he could hear the faint tingling of tiny bells. “A Mirrit egg?” he asked, holding it to Elyse’s ear so she could hear.</p><p>“I have never heard of this before,” Elyse muttered, tilting her head curiously at the sound. “I have never seen record of a Mirrit laying an egg.”</p><p>They considered smashing it, but were unsure of what it would release – and it was a pointless exercise for now, anyway, as the shell was thin but hard as stone. Eventually they decided to wrap it in cloth and stick it in a corked bottle. As they were doing this, they failed to notice the sounds of someone entering the shop, and jumped at the sound of a warning rap at the guestroom door before Minerva pushed it open. “Well, girl,” the stout old woman said, as she entered the room, “Was your healing successfu-”</p><p>She stopped, drinking in the scene before her of Elyse and Martimeos, both nude and two swift steps from the bed. Then she barked a laugh and closed the door, shaking her head. “I owe you a silver, Ritter!” they heard her call, muffled, through the door. “He lives!”</p><p>Martimeos’ face burned, and he quickly pulled out a fresh pair of clothes from his pack, frowning at the bloodied, torn leathers he had worn to the ruins. Even Elyse seemed slightly embarrassed for once.</p><p>When they were dressed they went to the front of the shop to find Minerva tidying up while Ritter stood in a corner, puffing on a pipe of his own. Flit was there too, perched on a shelf; upon seeing Martimeos he chirped triumphantly and landed in his master’s wild brown hair, nestling in. Martim shrugged and let him stay there for now. Minerva looked at the both with mirth in her eyes but said nothing except how astonishing it was that Martimeos had lived. When he mentioned how hungry he was, Ritter stepped out, and returned shortly with a loaf of freshly baked bread and a jar of honey, watching in astonishment as Martim took slice after slice slathered in honey, until nearly the whole loaf and half the jar was gone.</p><p>Martimeos, licking the honey from his fingers, mentioned that they should make another trip back up to the ruins, after Elyse had finished explaining what they had found there – the glimmerling, the Mirrit – after all, they had left in such a haste that he had left his sword stuck in Zeke, and Elyse had dropped his crossbow as well. Ritter and Minerva said they would come along, and Ritter left to hook up an old rickety cart to Bela so she could pull them all along.</p><p>As they stepped outside, Elyse not bothering to change into her woolen dress, the few villagers walking around widened their eyes with fear and scurried away at the sight of them. Minerva and Elyse glanced each other and shared a laugh over that, as Martim raised his eyebrow at them curiously. After they were done laughing, Elyse apologized to Minerva for calling her a bumpkin and Minerva waved her apology away, saying she had been called far worse by troubled patients.</p><p>They met Ritter by the inn and set out, Ritter riding Bela while Elyse, Martimeos and Minerva sat in the bumpy cart in the back. Bela was still a bit worn from her race back into town the other night, but still they made good time, and it was just a bit past midday when they had reached the garden of skulls. Ritter topped his cart there and dismounted from Bela, not wanting to roll over the bones in the dirt path. Minerva looked at the buried corpses in horror; Ritter just looked grim, shaking his head sadly.</p><p>It was a short walk from there to the ruins, though Martim and Elyse told the two of them to stay back while they entered first, just to make sure that nothing was awry within. Though the midday sun burned bright, the light still did not reach into the ruins, and it still took a torch to light their path within – though the darkness seemed much less intimidating now, with the Ritter and Minerva peering in curiously after them.</p><p>The ruins still smelled of burnt feathers, and they found things much as they had left them. The beak and tongue of the Mirrit still lay on the ground; these Elyse covered with a cloth and pushed to the side of the hall with her foot, warning that the beak was sharp and still poisonous. The corpse of the glimmerling was there as well, though now that it was dead it looked just like the corpse of a man, no longer held suspended in the air. Martim was able to get a closer look at the wizard, holding his torch over him as he tugged his sword from his chest. He wore sky-blue robes worked through with a yellow thread in the design of roses and briars. Fine robes, though now torn, and stained, as Martimeos wiped his sword clean on them. He was a dignified looking man, lean, almost gaunt, with sharp features and a strong, hawklike nose, and jet-black hair peppered here and there with silver swept back from a widow’s peak, though now his fine clothes were stained dark red with blood – besides the sword to his chest, Elyse’s crossbow bolt had struck him in the gut. He had a great golden ring on one finger, with a large sapphire set into it – that would be a fine treasure, but what Martim found more interesting was what he had strapped to his belt. It was a long dagger, nearly a short sword, with an ornate hilt, but what really made Martim’s eyes widen was the design on the pommel. It was a stag’s head, with branching, wicked-looking horns. He unhooked the sheathed blade from the man’s belt and drew out the dagger. It was made of pitch-black metal; Dolmec iron, as it was called, the same material that was offered to the Dolmec who had led him to Silverfish. No one knew why the Dolmecs longed for the metal, but they took it as offering in return for favors.</p><p><br/>
Finally, they finished checking around, and called Minerva and Ritter in, telling them it was safe. Minerva huffed and shook as she made her way into the ruins, complaining loudly about how eerie it felt, but Ritter just marched along silently, surveying things, his hand on his sword. When he saw the glimmerling’s corpse, his eyes widened, and he shook his head sadly. “That’s Zeke, for certain,” he said, looking for a moment as if he might cry, his eyes going misty in his wizened, hardened face. “Looks just like I saw him all those years ago.” He bent to take the ring from the wizard’s finger, which almost caused Martim to shout in alarm – he did not know whether or not it was a simple ring or a wizard’s ring, and perhaps dangerous – but Ritter just shook his head at Martim’s warning. “No, lad, ‘tis just a ring. A gift I got for Zeke a long time ago.” He rolled it over in his fingers quietly, watching the sapphire sparkle in the torchlight, then tossed it to Martim, who caught it deftly. “I won’t keep it from you. I wouldn’t really want it anymore, anyway. ‘Twould just remind me of his sorry end.”</p><p>Martim took out the dagger he had taken from Zeke, showing it to Ritter, unsheathing it to display the black blade. “Do you know where Zeke got this dagger from?” he asked quietly.</p><p>Ritter took the dagger in his hands and rolled it over and over, staring at it with narrowed eyes. “Aye….aye, I think I know where I’ve seen this blade. Not often you see a dagger like this. ‘Twas maybe a year or so before the troubles, when Silverfish still had many visitors. A group of lads came into town...sorry, but I cannot remember how many were in their party. All I remember was that they looked dangerous. They went to visit Zeke, once they heard we had a wizard. I was a bit worried, but figured Zeke could handle himself, and nothing untoward happened in the end. A bit later I visited Zeke, after the lads had left, and he showed me this blade, saying one of the boys had traded it to him for some knowledge and some trinkets.”</p><p>“Do you happen to know where those men went after they left Silverfish?”</p><p>Ritter shook his head, handing the blade back to Martim. “Sorry lad, I’ve no idea. Silverfish got many visitors in those days. I could never keep track of their comings and goings.” Martim sighed, thanking Ritter as he took the blade back.</p><p>Martim and Elyse led them to the end of the hallway, to the flooded stairwell. Ritter’s eyes widened upon seeing the water. “It wasn’t flooded when last I visited,” he explained. “The first floor was always in this sorry state, but there were two more floors below. That was where Zeke spent most of his time, did most of his research. Though I can’t imagine what the state of things are down there now.”</p><p>Martim tsked in frustration, glaring at the waters; for a moment Elyse thought he was almost about to dive in to go explore the sunken depths of the wizard’s lair. But he just sighed, and lifted his torch to reveal the pile of bones sunk within the water. Ritter cursed, and Minerva choked back a sob, then broke into tears, more emotion in the stern old woman than Elyse and Martim had been expecting, holding on to the old soldier. “At least we’ll have their remains, now,” Ritter said quietly, soothing her as she moaned in grief.</p><p>Finally, Elyse took the potted tree out of the ruins, placing it in the sun, sitting down and staring at it intently. Out of the darkness of the cave, its leaves were an even more brilliant blue than she had thought. She did not recognize the type of tree it was, though she thought it looked like a willow sapling. After watching the shadows of its leaves dance on the ground, and listening to the rustle of the wind through its branches, she sighed, looking up at Minerva, Ritter and Martim, who were watching her with curiousity. “A young boy’s soul is in this tree. Though it is still too hard to tell much more than that. It seems he knew little of human speech, and still knows little of the tree’s speech as well. I cannot even tell his name. Though it seems this happened to him recently.”</p><p>“Do you think...it’s little Jacob? The Dahlson’s boy?” Minerva sighed, wiping fresh new tears from her eyes.</p><p>“Perhaps. It seems likely.” Elyse held up a hand to stop Minerva’s next question. “I cannot turn him back, I do not have the skill. You would have to search long to find one with the Art who did, I think. And the longer he stays a tree, the more difficult it becomes to turn him back...”</p><p>“You don’t have to rub my nose in it,” Minerva snapped, wiping her tears with a handkerchief.</p><p>Elyse seemed genuinely abashed. “I...I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I just...do not want to give you false hope. Better now to just accept that he is a tree than to think he might be returned. But give him sun and water and ‘tis not so bad. Trees lead long, happy lives.”</p><p>“I don’t understand, though.” Ritter scratched his bald head. “You said you think that Mirrit ate the other children. Why would Zeke turn Jacob into a tree?”</p><p>“You may never know,” Martimeos replied. “Such is the way with glimmerlings.”</p><p>In the end, they left Zeke’s corpse there, bringing back with them the potted tree and the remains of the Mirrit, which Elyse wrapped in many layers of cloth. She was keeping them, she said – she was sure there was something to be learned from the remains of an Outsider. Once back in town, Ritter called a town meeting in the inn, gathering all the villagers that remained in the common room. Elyse and Martimeos were there, as well, and though Elyse saw some angry glares from the villagers who had been in the crowd last night, they seemed too scared to do anything – and then, once Ritter explained that the curse had been broken, by Elyse and Martim, had the decency to seem ashamed.</p><p>There was a great collective sigh as Ritter announced the bodies of the children had been found, but not so much weeping. These folk, it seemed, had given up on the idea of finding the children alive a long, long time ago. There was some debate about what to do with the bodies – they would be somewhat difficult to retrieve – but eventually it was decided that they’d do all they can to retrieve all of the remains surrounding Zeke’s place and give them a proper burial.</p><p>Martim and Elyse stayed within the village while Martim built up his strength, recovering from the Mirrit’s poison. Every day, Ritter would take out his cart to Zeke’s place, along with a few strong men; ever day he would return, before darkness fell, with a grim harvest of bones. It took a week to collect them all; thirty-three bodies, in the end, twenty-one of them children, though they only knew to count from the skulls, the rest of the bones being too jumbled to make sense of, and they could not tell which body was which. They dug graves for them, marking them anonymously with rocks until such time as appropriate headstones could be carved.</p><p>The Dahlsons took the news of their sun being a tree in stride – it seemed they too had long resigned themselves to the idea that he was gone. They planted him alongside the road leading out of town, the one Martim and Elyse had taken to enter. He was always running down that road, they said, as soon as he could walk, wondering what the rest of the world was like. He would like it to see what few travelers they got coming and going. They did ask Elyse if she would stay, saying they would pay her to translate what their son said from tree-speech. But Elyse shook her head, saying that she could not. “Send missives. There are others with the Art who know tree-speech as well. And those without, too. Some hunters and rangers learn of it,” she suggested. Though while she was here, she was surprisingly generous to them, spending time every day to go with the Dahlson’s to their son and tell them what she could make out of what he was saying. He was happy, she said, to see them again.</p><p>The villagers were polite and thankful, though they seemed to give Martimeos and Elyse a wide berth now that they realized they practiced the Art. They had little to give, but they insisted upon scraping together a reward. They repaired Martim’s torn leathers; a seamstress told Elyse she’d sew her dress, but Elyse just laughed and said she liked the tatters, though she did ask the seamstress if she might have some ribbons for her hair. And they took what little coin they had and pooled it together into a purse for them. Martim asked the villagers about the dagger, and about the man who had carried it, but it seemed Ritter was the only one who remembered anything about it at all.</p><p>They continued to practice the Art together. By now Martim could turn Flit a different color – though the cardinal was insulted when he was anything but red – and Elyse could make dry paper smoke and slowly wither. They opened the book they had taken from Zeke together; it was a book of sigils, they soon realized, though the patterns were so complex and intricate that Martim did not think he could properly draw the least of them. The book was strange, too; the pages shifted around, no matter how they marked them, they would come to find their bookmark was now marking a different sigil than the one they had been studying. A dangerous book, Martim declared, and they should be careful in studying it. Zeke had been knowledgeable indeed.</p><p>But finally, Martim had had a few weeks of hearty meals, and felt himself recovered, and decided to tell Elyse he was going to leave.</p><p>She was on her bed in the apothecary’s guestroom, a candle flickering on the vanity lighting against the darkness that had settled in for the night, idly scratching behind Cecil’s ears as he purred – since her familiar had fee range of the town, he had been growing fat on fish stolen from the docks or offered by villagers – and he was checking his pack, making sure that he had everything that he wanted to take with him. “I think tomorrow,” he said suddenly, “is a good time to leave.”</p><p>Elyse glanced at him. “I was wondering when you’d feel good enough to head out. Where are we off to?”</p><p>“You still plan on following me?”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>Martim was quiet for a moment. “Why?” he asked. Elyse stopped her petting of Cecil, eliciting an annoyed meow from her familiar, and looked at him. When she did not say anything, he continued. “You said you were a wanderer. We happened to stumble across each other in the wood. Why now follow where I go?”</p><p>He was expecting some biting remark or perhaps an insult. But instead, Elyse seemed forlorn, gazing sadly at the floor as she twisted the dark ring on her finger. “I like you, Martim,” she replied. “Is that not reason enough? I left wanting to learn, and we learn much of the Art from each other. Is traveling with me so bad? You get to admire the curve of my hip, and I your broad shoulders. Do you not yet trust me? I could have let you die, and yet I saved you. And not solely because I want your knowledge of the Art. I did it because I like you. You make me laugh.”</p><p>Martin felt a little abashed, rubbing the back of his head. “I...didn’t mean anything like that. ‘Tis just curious to meet someone in the wood and have them decide to follow me.”</p><p>“Where else would I have to go?” Elyse asked softly, not meeting his gaze.</p><p>Martimeos didn’t know how to answer that. He did still feel ashamed, though. The truth was, he didn’t completely trust Elyse yet. And yet it felt...wrong, not to do that, when she had saved his life. “Well...if that is your reason, that is your reason,” he replied finally. “And...er...Elyse, I like you as well. You are a fine companion to have on the road.”</p><p>Elyse just gave a small, sad chuckle at that. “Goodnight, Martimeos,” she said, rolling over in her bed and facing away from him, towards the wall.</p><p>Listening to the sounds of Martimeos readying himself for bed behind her, Elyse twisted and twisted the ring on her finger. She <em>did </em>like Martimeos. It felt bad to lie to him.</p><p>
  <b>8.</b>
</p><p>When they left the room, early the next morning, they took everything they had with them. Minerva was not there in the shop yet. They debated simply leaving Silverfish without a word, but decided to go in to the Inn to at least talk to Ritter one last time.</p><p>Ritter was there, half-dozing behind the bar as usual, scratching King behind the ears, brightening up when they walked in. But when they told him they were leaving, he looked crestfallen. “Ah, really?” he said sadly. “I was sort of hoping you’d settle down here. Be our new witch and wizard in residence, and all that.”</p><p>“Not a chance, old man!” Elyse scoffed. “Those with the Art travel when they are young.”</p><p><br/>
“I suppose that’s true,” Ritter replied sullenly. “’Twas what Zeke did, after all. I suppose I just want to see young couples moving back in here right away. Silverfish won’t survive without new blood.”</p><p>“Send out letters. You’ve got plenty of free houses.” Martimeos shrugged. “Maybe you will get some of your old neighbors to move back. I think this village could thrive again.”</p><p>“Aye, maybe,” Ritter replied. “But maybe not in my lifetime.” He glanced up at them, still looking disappointed. “At least let me fix you a farewell feast.”</p><p>“Not necessary. And no time. We plan to be miles away by midday.”</p><p>But still, they stuck around so that Ritter could give them rations of dry fish and hard bread, attempting to load them up with so much that Martim said they’d need another pack to carry it all, which Elyse steadfastly refused to bear the burden of. While they were waiting in the inn, Minerva joined them, having gone searching for them after opening up her shop and finding them and all their things gone. When she heard they planned on leaving, she sighed forlornly – Elyse wondered whether Minerva had been hoping they’d stay as well – and then rushed back to her shop. When she returned, she had a leather satchel, which she gave to Elyse, which was full of herbs and different apothecary ingredients, along with a few notes about the kinds of plants she might find in this land. She whispered in Elyse’s ear about the uses of some of the plants, and Martim watched curiously as Elyse went beet red. “That’s not necessary!” she snapped at the older woman, but Minerva just laughed.</p><p>As they stepped out of the inn, they took one last look around Silverfish. Few other villagers were up – just one lone rowboat out on the lake, with two men casting for fish. Winter was coming on, and the lake’s banks were now thickly crusted with ice, and the few houses that were occupied had smoke coming from their chimneys from the warming fires lit inside. Martim tried to imagine what the village might look like one day, if it recovered – all the roofs brightly painted again, the debris cleared away, the streets once again filled with laughing children. It seemed like it would be a cheerful place. He wondered if it would ever come to pass.</p><p>And so they said their goodbyes to Minerva and Ritter, and took the road north out of town, the same one they had come in on. As they passed by it, Elyse waved goodbye to the little sapling with blue leaves.</p><p>They took their time strolling along, their legs a little unused to the road after such a long rest, walking past the empty farms. It reminded Martimeos a bit of his home, now that he knew the people who occupied the village. When he had come in, the empty farms had all felt eerie. Now it just seemed a bit sad.</p><p>It was well past midday when the last farm had disappeared behind them, and they stopped when there was still plenty of light left, opting to set up camp before they drew near the crossroads – neither of them wanted to camp anywhere too close to that place. It was not like they had any plans on where to go, anyway. They opened up Zeke’s book of sigils, huddling together, their familiars at their side, trying to make sense of it until the light faded and darkness fell, and they decided to go to sleep.</p><p>Martimeos was awoken, in the middle of the night, by Elyse urgently calling his name. He groggily awoke, and glanced over at her. In the dim light of the moon, he could see her huddling against a tree, her face pale, her eyes wide with terror. Then he felt something pawing at his belt.<br/>
<br/>
He glanced over, and there was a huge, hulking figure standing over him, making strange snuffling sounds, clawing at him, its form hidden by the darkness. Whatever it was, it had made its way past his warning sigils. He shouted, scrambling back, feeling something tugged from his belt as he did so, and clapped.</p><p><br/>
The campfire roared back to life, illuminating the creature, who rose as the fire’s dancing light was cast over it and grinned at him.</p><p>It was the Dolmec. The same one he had spoken to, which had told him to go to Silverfish, its foxlike head full of snarling black fangs, those gleaming dark eyes boring into him. Now, out of its hunched back, extended two – no, four – arms. Pale, human-looking arms, of dirty white flesh, looking dead and rotten, the fingernails talons of black metal, and where the bone was exposed Martimeos could see the bone was made of gleaming black metal as well. In one of those arms, it clutched the dagger of Dolmec iron he had taken off of Zeke.</p><p>“Bastard!” Martimeos cried, lurching to his feet, trying to draw his sword. But the Dolmec merely laughed, a rattling, awful laugh, and then Martimeos found that his bones turned to jelly and he fell to the ground, unable to even lift a hand. To his side, he could hear Elyse collapse as well, cursing under her breath in panicked, frightened gasps.</p><p>The Dolmec laughed again as it shuffled towards them, its arms moving oddly, disjointedly as it did, the shadows from the campfire dancing over its hunched, wicked form. “<em>Well well,” </em>it said, in its strange, echoing, musical voice. “<em>A mageling and a witchling in my power. What shall I do with you? Flay the flesh from your bones? </em><em>Tear out your throats and drink the blood like wine? Carve out your hearts?”</em> When it said that, it was standing almost directly over Martimeos, looming over him; one of its four arms extended, talons poised, directly over his chest, as if it were about to do just that, its fox head hungry and drooling. But then it laughed again, stepping back. “<em>But why be so rude, when you have done me such a great service? </em><em>Finally, I can leave this land.</em><em>” </em>It waggled the dagger, still in its sheathe, at them, and then drew it out. The foxhead settled its jaws around it eagerly, and with a snap, the blade was gone, cleanly sheared from the hilt, as the foxhead slowly chewed and swallowed it.</p><p>“Bastard!” Martimeos cried again, feeling the fury rise in him despite the danger he was in. “Thief! That was my brother’s blade!”</p><p>“<em>Never yours nor his,” </em>the Dolmec answered as the foxhead was still chewing. It idly tossed the now-useless hilt to him, where it landed on his chest. “<em>And besides, mageling. You have all that you need from it, do you not? You know now you are on your brother’s trail.”</em></p><p>And with that, it turned, laughing, rattling, to walk off into the darkness. “Wait!” Martimeos cried. “Wait! You owe me a favor! For the blade!”</p><p>The Dolmec did not turn around, but it did pause. “<em>My favor is your life spared, fool. </em><em>But long have I waited for this, so consider yourself blessed. You will not find my kindness a third time.” </em>The Dolmec continued shuffling, disappearing into the shadows, but as it did, its voice called out to them.</p><p>“<em>Go west, young Martimeos. Go west.”</em></p>
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